brotherhood of the woods tree archers. are the best imo. im not sure why there so good but when i get 30 or 40 of them behind some imperial legionnaires i never lose. take some time to test em out?
Agree. I would love to see the realism of barbed arrows, bodkin arrows and so on, against their respectable armors (needle bodkin are great against padded and chain, but bounce off of plate, for instance). Tod's Workshop does great experimentation on the differentials, that the M&B devs could stand to see - ua-cam.com/video/DBxdTkddHaE/v-deo.html
This is right, and holy crap does it make a difference. I recently installed the mod and it makes dealing with forest bandits manageable. That and makes massing archers a flawed tactic instead of the worlds greatest.
Would it be possible to do a "pitfalls video"? Something like units not to use, and mistakes with companions, or times you really don't want to declare war. Quests that harder than they should be for the rewards...etc
ItalianSpartacus definitely gonna sub to see this. How are you planning on formatting the vid? Will you account for terrain, siege, bandit camp settings? Either way I kno it’ll be good. Thnx
I think the Vlandian Sharpshooters don't get enough love. They have one of the slowest rates of fire, but they do insane amounts of damage, and they're pretty decent in melee. Empire has probably the best all around troop line up, but I think Vlandians come in as a close second, without having to deal with Empire territory placement. I also disagree with the strength of archer cav. I've been playing around with them extensively, and one thing I've noticed is that while they overperform against mid tier troops, once they get to high tier troops their kill count starts to fall off. Additionally, a lot of the archer cav units get hunted down pretty easily, with only the noble line being safe from the terror of the super cavalry coming out from Vlandia and Empire. Considering both the Khuzaits and Aserai have a bit of a tough time massing noble units, that makes the losses you take in less than maxed noble units pretty tough to replace.
I think that's the thing. The large reason why archers are so effective is that the A.I. seems incapable of maintaining an elite force. I had about 12 sharpshooters and 17 palatine archer working side by side; and the former got about 18/22 kills and the later got 44/48. Largely because I was facing an army of nearly 300 mostly recruits which largely folded over when anything hit them. Of course, the 50 or so cav I had won the fight, but strictly speaking it's better to go archers in single player just simply because the armour pentitration rarely matters. The billman and their evolution are incredible though, especially in siege defence and as a general sledge hammer, I have a unit of roughly 20 I try and keep around because those guys never fail to devastate on the charge, or even on siege defence/attack those guys have had incredible killing sprees. Only issue of course is that they are pretty exposed to archer fire and can be hard countered by that, and usually have a higher fatality count then most other elite unit's I've used so far. Vlander in general is a pretty incredible faction.
I like horse archers because they are excellent at tearing open enemy formations. If the enemy is turtling, just send your horse archers to wheel around them and pepper them with arrows. You're not necessarily trying to kill a lot of people, but trying to open up their lines for your other units to take advantage of.
Unfortunately, crossbow line is not quite good right now. Some bow actually have damage very close to the best crossbows avaible, and shields on back no longer block projectiles. And crossbow bolts still not have the damage bonus like arrows did. Hope Talesworld balance that, maybe scale down bows a bit? Kind of miss warband crossbowmen, especially in some mods where they changed the reload animation, that they turn their back towards the enemy while reloading.
@@gaiusjuliuspleaser That's why my preferred mid to late game army for field battles is roughly 40/60 or 30/70% horse archers / heavy horse respectively. Send the horse archers in to skirmish around the enemy as they normally would and it breaks up their formation, then order the heavy cav to charge, and watch the carnage unfold! If the enemy have a lot of cavalry themselves it's usually wise to call the horse archers back as you send the heavy horse in, so the latter can take the 'aggro' off them as it were, then they can be sent back into the fray. Perfect strat for Khuzait as they can provide both without nobles, allowing it to be a feasible tactic earlier in the game.
my 80+ horse archers can kill any 1000+ army though, use follow me then just run circle around enemy infantry while ignoring their calvary, use retreat when out of ammo and repeat. all reallistic difficulty btw. need 100+ khuzait nomad and high level tactician to buffer the army size, tell them to retreat at the start of the battle. Cant have too many horse archers, you need them to be compact formation so enemy infantrys and achers line keep shuffle around and dont have time to shoot at you, enemy calvary accuracy is too low to care about, their horse will die fast anyway from your horse archers. Unless there are so many calvary that block your kiting path then you can kill them off yourself with noble bow 10 guys at a time and quickly retreat from battlefield before any of your men die.
Triarii seems to be missing from this list, but that might be because you'll need to recruit them from the prisoners tab after defeating any Legion of the Betrayed faction.
100% why they aren't on here.. Especially if legionaries get throwing weapons. If Triarii could be reliably recruited, they'd be ace tier for sure! They're one of my favorite units
I think an interesting idea for a video for you would be to take a look into all the minor faction units (lake rats, hidden hand, etc.) as some of these units do have higher stats than the standard unit lines.
Lake rats and forest people in particular have excellent high stat troops. Additionally legion of the betrayed has bar none the best melee infantry in the game. Triarii are no joke
@@italianspartacus Assuming it will include how to obtain these units as some I've never seen, outside of people on UA-cam using console commands/cheats (I believe)...
This is an amazing breakdown! Thanks for your disclaimers and your organization of the units for discussion. Now....back to blocking out the sun with my Emperor Palpatine Archers.
@@siegfriedgottz698 Those crossbows pack an intense amount of punch compared to longbows, especially when led by crossbow skill focus leader. Good when concentrating fire on heavily armored units. Bane of players who don't have invested in shields, with or without armor. Melee/Throwing units are exceptional in the short range shock before they enter melee. Notable in sieges at choke points with throwing leader.
Kind of hope Talesworld adding a feature that allow player to bargain minor faction for thier respecrive recuits, maybe require perk in charm or rougery, some relation threshold, and limited number for a month or so. Captive conversion is not so reliable, and quite ramdon if you constantly taking in prisoners. IMO, on top of recuitment difficulty, minor faction troops usually have higher stats, seemingly in exchange of lesser armor, which not necessary make them all around better troop than the regular counterpart.
I kinda hope that with time as the game goes on and we get new features i would hope for caravans that can distribute faction troops. I have ran full nation armies like khuzait only and god do i hate having to trek back to the east just for recruits. This is something i could see be implemented. Would also become a necessity if they ever decide to give us the choice of custom world generation which would be crazy in terms of game replay-ability and unique experiences
In warband i had modification that alowed to create own unit and personalize equipment and mod when you had your own troop tree. I miss peasant with top tier armor and weapon :D
@Avatar Ang custom world generation isnt beyond the game's grasp, especially considering its amazing mod community. To be perfectly honest the current game map isnt even remotely close to what i would consider great considering if it is "hand crafted". i see nothing requiring the game to stick to just the one map and custom generation could easily expand the game's lifespan by years.
Excellent guide, and credit to you for delving deep into the mechanics, particularly the weapon load outs. You conflict with a lot of the guides I have seen, but what you say is more aligned with what I actually observe ingame. I see a lot of guides which toe the line of "this unit haz best stats, it iz the best" ... but building an army based solely on Imperial infantry, Palatines and horse archers, whilst it works "fine" ... seems to be open to a lot of counters. I have had some technically "powerful" armies overrun by peasant armies because they have a lot of skirmishers throwing javelins before they engage in melee. Goat farmers with big shields and lots of javs can make a technically "good" army look a bit silly at times. Similarly, during a siege attack, most of my imperial troops got skullfucked at the top of ladders, i was down, but one crazy Sturgian(?) axe wielding psychopath got on the parapet and basically pootled around the battlements killing every last defender and I somehow won. Aseria specifically seem to have mad effectiveness on the open battlefield, even with basic troops (but perhaps this is balancing/bug issue which will be fixed) Thank you for this video. Its taught me to pay a bit more attention to factors I dont normally consider. For what its worth ... here are a few of my observations: I agree 100% with Vlandian Sergeants, they are the bomb. They just seem to have a superb survival rate. Half of the value of elite troops is that they survive for the next battle. Palatine Archers are superb default archer units. But not the best like most people say Having a good lineup is great, but obsessing about having a "perfect" army of specific troops is a fools errand. Frequently some rando units in the mix can offer a counter Khuzait Dharkans dont get the respect they deserve. They survive battles and do harm. Horse archers are only useful if you go all-in. I have won battles just by getting 40-50 horse archers to follow me, then riding around an army. When they send out the cav I skirmish, if the general engages, he might die. Engaging with a LARGE force of horse archers can deplete the enemy cavalry, potentially kill their General, and then cause the whole army to chunder forward across the map towards your guys. And when they do, you can drift around behind or beside them ... shooting them in the back. Horse archers are superb in force and at high level, but if you only have a few and they are shit .. you will just be fish in a barrel for their archer units. Go large or go home. Great video, thank you for really thinking about tactics.
You dont need nesserary perk to level up bandits troops into regular and noble units. When they are ready to upgrade put them into garrison to gastle or town with training grounds and wait couple days and they shoud have upgrade them another way to get put them into comppanion party and they will upgrade units when they battle.
You're absolutely correct and I made that point in the video :) BUT I think I made it sound like you still needed the perk so I'm sorry about that dude! In trying to make that portion of the video quick, I muddled my point. Doh!
ItalianSpartacus my searaiders and Highwaymen don’t Upgrade in garrisons, but my Forest bandits do, even when i sell warhorses to the City or put them in my keep stash
@@laurenzreichelt4911 I was about to say the same thing about Sea Raiders. I think I upgraded it into a Varyag, but only when I pulled it out of the garrison after getting the Disciplinarian perk.
Great video! I would have loved a mention to foot skirmishers as well. In my Battanian campaign I love to use Wildlings because of how versatile they are. They can destroy charging enemies with harpoons while also being excellent in melee against infantry and they even carry a spear to fight cav!
I have like 60 wildlings infront and around 40 Fianns at back,until any enemy reach they lose around half of the army and then after my horses charge they route.In every battle i lose from 1 to 5 soldiers only all in hardest diff.
Great video as always ! Love your content AND your voice ! You're very pleasant to listen to. I found you with the lore videos on the Warhammer Old World lore videos when playing Total War Warhammer without knowing anything about Warhammer. Never listened to a more pleasant and eloquent voice in the background while playing games. On Bannerlord's units : Love your take on it and yet here's me hoping we will at some time in the future be able to recruit from minor factions ^^. Oh man, just thinking about the Legion of the Betrayed. Or the Lake Rats even.
The Druzhinnik is still my favorite cav unit. I can only get like 3 at a time because it’s so hard to find Warrior Sons, but they rarely die and rack up kills for me
I feel like Aserai Heavy Mameluke Cavalry are an overall better choice than the Buccelarii. The Mamelukes get a shield which is huge in sieges and the Buccelarii also miss out on good horse armor. Also a majority of the Mameluke upgrade line is on horseback.
Very good point, but you're looking at two really hard tiers to get to that point, without much armor or a shield. Imperial bowmen are way easier to level in my opinion
I have built up a stack of these in my mostly Vlandian party and they rake in a lot if kills. I believe they have a much stronger bow than Bucelarii. They are not as good as Khans Guard, but I'd put them in second place for their decent overall armor and because they are easily obtained in large numbers (unlike Khans Guards and Bucellarii).
Archers are master of this game. Unless you use battle realism mode. They have to shoot 45 angle to anything more then 20 meteres from them. And at mass to hit anything.
I always use khusaite horse archers. Just run around and around till everyone dies. They could literally out number me by a 100. still lose to horse archers.
Love the Bucellarii - one small problem though, they require a war horse to upgrade and that may conflict with other heavy cav upgrade. But once they get going .... :D
Ohh man, great point. THat does really deplete from your war horse stock. Hopefully they level up fast enough as archers that they come in before you need war horses hahah
yeah, my favorite too, since Imperial recruits are "everywhere" and since they are at the end of the archers tree they are rather easy to upgrade consistently without too much effort.
@@italianspartacus But, they are really worth it :D. If I know I'll go for them, I'll try to keep an eye out for any war horses starting early and never pass up a good deal :D. I'm playing a campaign now, on easy granted, but I've managed to pull off a win with an army of 180 versus just over of 1000. Half of that were Bucellarii and then a bunch of Batanian Fian line troops plus bandits that upgrade into Fians and like 15 Imperial Legionaries as a first line :D. Got lucky with the map and had a really steep hill at the back of the map with a mountain behind so no flanking or encircling. 19 dead, 26 wounded on my side and we killed 831 of the enemy - granted they probably had something like 75% recruits but also some good troops. And the Bucellarii really slayed (put the on F6 as soon as the combat began). Worth every gold coin I paid for them :)))
I dont think them only getting a horse at their final upgrade is a problem. They server as good archers and then they are upgraded into really powerful heavy horse calv
@@martinez206045 i find the game to be much much different between easy and realistic difficulty. I typically leave the player received damage to 2/3 (because i would like to not have to hide behind my troops shitting myself when an arrow or javelin flies by) to have more fun but man when friendly troops only take even 2/3 damage it makes your party stupid strong and doesnt represent actual unit strengths and weaknesses
For a mutli-national mercenary band, I use: (normal troop line since noble ones are hard to come by) Sturgia: Veteran warrior as my defense infantry Aserai: Master Archer as my range troop Battania: Veteran Falxman as my offense infantry Vlandia: Vanguard as my lance calvary Khuzait: Heavy horse archer as my horse archer And since imperial troops are easy to recruit and well-rounded, they are used to fit in the roles I lack from time to time, since their normal line has good infantry (with spears), two hand infantry, crossbowman (I think they are better than imperial bowman when pairing with other ranged units), horse archer and their noble lance cav is relatively easier to get with the big recruiting area
I haven’t played a crap ton for a couple of weeks, but when I played earlier on, I noticed that my sturgian veteran warriors often survived much more often than my sturgian shock troops.
Yes, they do. In theory, the Shock Troop seems better equipped against all kinds of enemies, but the weaker armor really shows in the death count. I prefer the Veteran Warrior.
I once noticed while I raid a hideout that Shock-troop didn’t use his shield even though he has it so he died in front of me. I use Veteran instead since then till I heard someone says they win all 1v1 that I start to use them again but I think Veteran and Legionary are more durable in my style because for me infantries are use to hold the line for my cavalry so survivability is the most important factor for me.
cavalry only works when you lead them into the enemies, just command charge makes them loose cohesion instantly and just go at it randomly. either let them follow you on horseback or steer them with F1 to lead them through infantry lines, but keep an eye out to not go in full lines of infantry since they will get stuck and get rekt by spears. For the rest its usually pretty much follow the noble lines for best units in the game. I would argue that the palantine guard rival the master archers though, since they have I think better armor, but then again, Fians... What about the druzhinnik champions for cavalry? they seem to survive pretty much every battle I have had.
I do this to. Best is to charge later on in the battle from the side. Also something that maybe gets fixed is the fact that just having your cav on follow you can disorganize the enemy line so hard without even actually attacking making it easy targets for your archers.
yeah, I would agree. Currently, horse archers have far better AI control than Cavls, with horse archers at start battle pretty much F6 will let them go circle the enemy from the right side flank unless they are being challenged by other calvs. what I normally do now is send horse arches out with F6, and lead calvs to go to the left, let infantry and foot archers charge in the middle. as soon as horse archers finish their first circle I will lead the calv to charge in from the left to mess with their foot archers. and by this time the foot soldiers will be catching up and finishing off the front lines. normally when I double back do a second charge the enemy's infantry will be already gone, only leaving foot archers to be picked off.
@@jeroen3657 yeah, that makes sense historically though Having tons of incredibly fast warriors with pointed sticks that will instantly kill you and a line of archers just wsiting to rain hell upon you will usually be quite scary
I'm playing a Sturgia campaign right now, and they've rapidly become my favorite faction in the game. Their shock troops and veteran infantry work really well together, and their archers provide some nice support.
I haven't played in about a week so this may have changed but my mismatch army has 2 real standouts. Sturgian shock troops and imperial Palatine guard. Especially the shock troops, I've taken on Western empire armies outnumbering me almost 2-1 and my roughly 15 shock troops usually manage a 5-1 KDR in open fields, with the Palatine guard getting similar results. Shock troops definitely live up to their name
Elite Cataphract is grossly overrated: Their lance is two-handed, meaning they can’t be couched or be used with a shield. Their superior armor is largely useless because when charging, any damage taken is drastically amplified and armor does less to save their lives than sheer luck. They don’t have alternative means of attack and get stuck onto each other and the enemies when they bunch up and charge in. Their horses are the slowest war horse in the game. Aserai Faris, on the other hand... Are MUCH more deadly and versatile with their nuclear powered throwing weapons and highest-tier war horses, not to mention the armor is only slightly weaker.
Yup, I love skirmishing Cav, but the Aserai Faris brings a whole new meaning to skirmishing cav, their Sturgian counter part is like a looter compared to them. Also if you though EC was good then most likely you have never tried Druzhinnik from Strugia, just 3+f6 never worry about them in that battle.
To be honest, Khuzait Darkhans and Marksmen are WAY too good right now - the horse archers are bad enough, but the infantry and archers following that up just make it too much. And the AI just does not know how to handle horse archers either, so the Khuzaits (along with getting so many cavalry means +30% to their auto-resolve) tend to snowball unless specifically gutted early on. IMO, if the Khuzaits are going to get so many easily accessed horse archers, they need to lose their elite infantry and foot archers (if not get rid of their foot archers entirely) - as it stands it's just too much without an elite army that can specifically cut it to ribbons... and even then it'll be hard as hell because of how much damage they'll do. Good luck dealing with them without superior numbers when it's the hogepoge mix the AI uses, especially if you're not the army commander, because the AI just CANNOT figure out how the hell they're supposed to fight horse archers. To be honest, they're worse than the Battanians. At least with Battania, their archers are limited in numbers and you can navigate around them if you need to. The Khuzaits just get tons of cav - as they should! - but their infantry in turn is just too good for what should be their weakness for having such a focus on horse archers.
Agreed. At least with the Khuzait horse archers, the player can take them on relatively easily (assuming you have heavy armor), if you get in amongst their horde with a solid two handed axe or glaive. Their low armor means you can cut through them like butter, and since they’re not left handed, if you stay on their right they can’t shoot you. Obviously, the AI can’t do this, so they’ll get mulched by these 100 horse archer hordes that khuzait armies often run around with. But on top of that you have to deal with a shit load of heavy armored archers and darkhans who have near infinite morale, that can laser you. I’ve been knocked out more times from khuzait ground troops than khuzait cav.
i've seen a marmaluke palace guard absolutely destroy troops while defending a ladder attack in a siege... since then i always make sure my garrisons have a handful of them... i don't know how they compare to others but i was sold by the visual experience.
Another detail to keep an eye out for: horse barding (something I find lacking in the Sturgian Raider and Bucellarii cases, 10 and 15 armor vs 58 and 38 of the respective Aserai and Khuzait alternatives)
On this topic the Mameluk Regulars (the first horse level) are melee lancers and have little to no barding and armor. This makes them excruciatingly hard to level, regularly dying to looters as tier 3 units no less, this makes them a large waste of resources and time for a subpar horsearcher. Aserai get the short end of the stick in everything really....
Yeah, a stack of throwing something would be nice to compensate. Might even be safer to level them dismounted and mixed with other infantry just in front of them.
The Khan's Guard only has one stack of arrows instead of two like Kheshig (their previous upgrade line), making Kheshig actually a better horse archer for sustained skirmish.
I agree with you, but I'll be honest - I've never seen the AI run out. I'm also not really looking, but I feel like the AI gets to cheat with their arrows
@@italianspartacus They definitely can. During a bandit camp raid, I watched my one archer's quiver and the arrows actually began to deplete until it was empty and he drew his sidearm. The archers DO scavenge for arrows, though, so if there is return fire coming your way then it's like a free reload for your archers. One thing I noticed, though, is that archers do not use the barrels of arrows to reload during sieges (or in some bandit camps). At one camp raid, I continuously reloaded my own arrows and shot the arrows into the ground at the feet of my archers so that they would scavenge the arrows and would do that to make sure they had a full quiver for the next wave of bandits we took on.
@@italianspartacus some time i fight 400-500 army with ~100 horse archers, they do run out of arrow even with 2 stacks, then they start to charge into enemy infantries and get killed, i have to retreat after fighting for awhile to reset the arrows, in order to not losing any troop
@@aleluve13 The primary purposes of horse archers are for skirmishing, not charging If I play as Khuzait, I don't want to lose Kheshig/Khan's Guard at all and will use Khuzait Lancer (or other culture's cavalry) for charging
Really good info/vid, i play for a week but i agree on every statement about these units its exactly what i have in my army comp!and the glaive is not only mot op weapon iame it also sells for a fortune !
My favorite two handed infantry is the Aserai Palace guard. They chew through everything with their axes and they have good armor. They would always get a crap ton of kills in my games.
Nicely done vid Sir! Also I'd like to share some thought of mine: Heavy infantry: before the buff, Vlandian Sergeant was very sluggish because with all the gear and armor, they only have 60 athletic skill, now with the buff, they are more or less the same unit as Legionary with worse armor overall, and both can spawn with the mace. Sturgian veteran warrior is also very good, if only they don't have that chance of spawn with the bad shield, they trade some armor for better offensive power of throwing weapon. With the latest patch buff and shield wall collision fix, sturgian troops now form the best shield wall of the game. Aserai vet infantry and battanian wildling also work really well as frontline OFFENSIVE infantry, but can also work as skirmisher. Wilding is more durable at the moment, only because the Aserai have really bad head armor (which will likely be changed) and tiny shield. Archer: a shout out to Palatine Guards, sure in the latest patch they have 30 less bow skill than Aserai Master Archer and only one quiver, but their heavy armor (higher than Legionary) and very nice one-handed sword will likely make up for it. They can be use as heavy infantry as well, in fact, they are the only kind of archers I feel fine while left undefended on the battlefield for how tough and close-combat effective they are. Two-handed/pole-arm troop: I prefer the Imperial elite menavliaton over the Voulgier, they are heavily armored, and the normal/fine steel menavliation has better reach and longer blade so the AI will get maximum damage more often. Also the Mameluke palace guard is strong and well-armored too, their axe are really mean, but they dont have the reach advantage of polearm troops. Heavy shock cav: Vlandian Banner knight (VBK) and Elite Cataphract (EC) have different playstyle. For VBK it's usually charge, get couch dmg, retreat, regroup, repeat. You dont want them to fooling around with enemy infantry since they only have 174 total armor for a T6 heavy cav, which is around the same as their T5 sergeant (~170). EC, on the other hand, does not have that amazing couch lance damage, they can't even use their lance with a shield but it out-ranged any other cav polearm and most of infantries. Coupled with their whooping 214 total armor rating (highest in the game) they have no problem messing around with other infantries, get these guys if you want a charge-them-and-forget cav. Faris Vanguard is like a heavy/skirmisher cav hybrid, do well in both roles. Horse archer: another shout out for Mameluke heavy cav. In term of fire power they are in the middle between Khan's guard and Bucellarii, and they only have one quiver. But they come with a very nicely armored horse, and a sword and shield combo as a backup make them very versatile in many combat situations.
Skill level absolutely matters. The amount of kills that Battanian Fian Champions get when compared to Battanian Fians is immense! The only real difference in terms of their ranged power is the substantial jump in bow skill. I have to believe the same applies to melee units, as well. *Edit: I also think the Battanian Fian line is beyond overpowered. The Fian Champions have literally 100 more bow skill than the tier 5 archers of any other faction. Their output is disgustingly good.
well , i ve done a full Imperial crossbow army (around 100 men) it was shredding all open field battles when placed in a line. But struggled like hell in sieges
As someone who loves and has even specced out my character as a Khan’s Guard, I can confirm their glory. I will also admit that I fear the Faris. Whenever I wheel my glorious horde of khan’s guard towards the enemy... I make sure there are no skirmisher cavalry alive first and foremost.
Personally I don't think archers need their stats adjusted because archers in all redards are supposed to be op, they changed the field of battle. If anything just make them cost more or put limits on them, keep their stats but make it harder to field tons of them
To get a bunch of battanian fians is really easy. Attack forest bandits and take prisoners (or if the difference in party size is big enough they will join you) then recruit the prisoners one by one. Then just do battle with them until your forest bandits are ready to upgrade. Place them in a castle for a day and they will upgrade to battanian fians.
Even the intro to this taught my noob ass something, I've been leaving my best units in garrisons and only go get them when major wars break out while I take all my wimpy units out with me to level them up, this changes everything haha
While I appreciate the option to have mixed troops, I really wish the game made a mixed army more difficult to maintain and create. It sorta loses the flavor of your chosen nation if you have no benefits or detriments depending on where you recruit from. This is something I hope they consider addressing in patches. Have foreign troops cost inf, or make them far more expensive. Honestly I think the troops are much too cheap as is.
So there are like.. Hidden morale penalties, but I agree.. Maybe increased wage demand, more likely to leave when not paid/over troops. I think that's something we really need is troop loyalty.. If something has recently been recruited, then that's the first to leave when it comes to any time that troops would abandon
They should be converted into your choosen factions troops with different stats as that’s what would happen when recruiting from a foreign land only captured armies Or divisions should stay as there respected unit and line
My favourite moment ever in the game is when inhad just elite chatafracts and I charged strait at a much larger army that was like entirely recites and archers like no spears or long wepons what so ever and it was like a hot knife through butter
My friend was playing bannerlord on my pc and during a siege he died and he and me watched a vlandian voulgier get like 8 kills alone before dying and we kept saying he was cracked
Mamaluke Palace Guard is quite awesome for me. Good armour, good throwing, and large axes. If you let them charge into an enemy line, they'll take losses but the line will be shattered, pretty much winning you the battle. Also works great in sieges where the walls are already down.
If you need to level underwhelming units like the Sturgian Woodsman, get a batch of them, set them on their own control group (ie set to unit 5, skirmishers) and then chase after units of looters. When you enter battle, hit f4 (hold fire), the units control group and hit f4 again, allowing them to fire, then have them charge. This will let your underwhelming units that you want to level go solo vs looters, allowing for easy leveling. Just be aware that when near settlements your control groups above 4 will sometimes bug out and place your units FAR in advance of the rest of your forces
Faris have great stats and equipment on paper but is actually really hard to use. The biggest problem is their excellent riding skill and awesome Aserai horse making them way too fast for their own good. If you don't micro them and let them loose, their high speed means the javelin throws are terribly inaccurate. Then they quickly run out of their javelins (having only one pouch). They will charge enemy infantry. The problem is that infantry in bannerlord judge horse speed with 100% accuracy and never miss unless you juke them out. Coupled with the fast speed of their horse, my Vanguard Faris often gets one shot by some bottom tier spearman. I have had mixed Cavalry armies for a while and I lose them faster than any other noble cav. In practice it is best to group them to their own group and they absolutely rekt slower horse archers especially from the Khuzaits.
I'm starting to really notice that horse archers are strong but need some solid micro to maximize them. Putting them on advance is the way to go.. They'll stay at max range.. Then use charge when you are okay with them engaging if they get counter charged
11:22 Cataphracts are beasts and rightly so. One of their most famous battles was the battle of Carrhae a Roman army personally funded by the richest citizen at the time Crassus (The man who defeated Spartacus) The Parthian king used his land forces to deal with traitors that helped the Romans. He send his general Surena to distract the Roman army of 45.000 with 9000 cav archers and 1000 Cataphracts. Long story short it ended with them loosing only 38 Cataphracts. 20.000ish Romans died 10.000 were captured and Rome suffered a terrible defeat and lost an couple Eagles thus their honor. And the Parthian King was such a giant jealous cunt when he heard about this glorious victory his loyal general achieved...He had Surena executed. I honestly feel bad for Surena.
@@tafad5138 I can't blame them for copying the weapon that handed them one of their worst defeats ever. Like for real 30.000+ vs 38 ? That's amazing no matter how you look at it. I'll be they were laughing their ass off. Another great moment for the Parhians was when Crassus send his son with 1300 Gaulic cav 500 archers and a few Cohorts to drive away their horse archers. Archers pretended to flee they went in balls deep and guess what they found. An entire line of Parthian Catahpracts in front, archers behind. They got slaughtered. When Crassus rushed to their aid he found his son's head stuck on a spear.
Funny how the same Parthian cataphracts got destroyed by Ventidius Bassus on 3 major occassions in a clear avengement of Carrhae and to put it very simply, if the cataphracts were that great, soldiers from the desert wouldn't have been able to decimate their empire.
@@eldeebcampeador Tried finding more about him but only got weird christian shit. There are many factors to war just saying better troops win always no matter the circumstances is just wrong. First they must have had inept commanders, I found a few instances where Cataphracts got defeated by outflanking or by Alexander...But that's cheating that brilliant muppet never lost a battle with his Phalax. Surena was rather brilliant which brings me to army compisition. He used 9000 cav archers to pelt the enemy and while they were defendibg 1000 Cataphracts charged and beat them back. He repeated this untill the Romans got destroyed. Since I couldn't find more about the battles in which they lost I can't judge it. Ofc they can be beaten but it often resolves around superior tactics and flanking. Not charging in head first.
While I agree, the Fian Champion is by far the best archer, I actually find I enjoy the Imperial Sergeant Crossbowmen as a better second place than the veteran archer or even the vlandian crossbow line. The heavy armor, high damage crossbow, sword AND shield for melee...these guys are absolutely brutal for softening up the enemy and then reinforcing the depleted frontlines once their bolts are spent. And, when it comes to defending walls, I think they may be even better than Fians. They perform better in melee in my experience and so when the enemy reaches the wall, sergeant crossbowmen will usually make short work of them.
I thought the Vlandian Sergeants also carried a polearm as well as the shield and one handed? They’re my favorite infantry unit because they can counter cav and are really sturdy fighters in melees
Wait didn't I say that they did!!? Dammit, that was like.. one of the biggest driving factors behind selecting them for their spot! Why.. am i... stupid
Do NOT touch Sturgian Ulfhednars. Despite the buff to 2h and Atheltics, these guys get melted by anything they touch because of a clear lack of armor. If you want beast mode 2h units. Get the Sturgian Shock Trooper instead. They have an enormous round shield, good heavy armor, and rock a powerful 2h polearm that they use for close quarter fighting.
Loving the game, but I do reckon the units need a little more balancing to better reflect their lore. The Sturgia buff is a good sign though. Can't help feel the Imperial factions are a little too strong atm. They're supposed to be well armoured and well rounded, but they end up with some of the best infantry and heavy cavalry in the game, which allows them to straight up overshadow Sturgia and Vlandia. Also damn, no idea why people have the impression that Battania's regular infantry roster sucks. Its perfectly good and matches up well with everyone else in all but defence. Even their cavalry have done alright by me- just try not to use them like Cataphracts or Khan's guard. All that being said though, I like how you can do just fine just taking units from a single faction.
Quick way to level woodsmen and brigands; assign them all to their own skirmisher unit then farm looters by putting that unit in front of your infantry line on loose formation. Hold all fire on everyone else and let them throw away. Even in melee the woodsmen can handle themselves against looters. Or just advance your infantry before the lines meet to be safe. I wish I could play the 1.3 branch. Sadly, battles slow to an absolute crawl no matter my settings. Sturgians are my favourite faction too.
All of this falls apart as soon as you install mods that makes armor stronger ;( like. RealArmor + Realist Battles I also installed Noble Troops, which make your heavy calavry superior! I just cannot play with the vanilla units anymore.
You're the REAL number one, Kay. I'm streaming in two and a half hours. I want to see you there. And then at every stream this weekend. You're staying with us brother, none of that business you spoke about last stream. I am an extremely depressive individual, and have been my entire life.. We're all fighting the same war, just a different battle. I want to see you turn up to every stream. Even if to say hi and that you're alright. If you need someone to talk to... Join the discord, we're all. Here for you
@@italianspartacus Thanks my man. i was in a really dark place in my mind the past few days. However if i would do the act of no return i would cause so much damage to all the people who care. I know im not alone in this and there are many others who have to overcome this mountain. Sometimes it just gets to much but bad days are always better then no days at all. I will most certainly check your stream today.
Yeah man I totally understand and I'm glad that's where your mind is at. Just gotta remember that you NEED bad days. They color the good ones and make the victory all the sweeter. Love you brother, see you in the stream
So for the elite cataphract and other noble lines, I've found that going to villages and seeing if they have a quest about deserters and then doing that quest gets you quite a few noble units as prisoners
The best and easiest line is: join someone, lead an army of you and your companion party non stop, get 125 leadership, stack up on level 5 bandit prisoners, and boom, full army of noble line soilders.
F6 your horse archers, shield wall your infantry, spread out your archers, and personally lead your cav to crush the enemy cav, followed by the enemy's rear!
I'm sorry but I'm going to say it. You guys need to stop bitching about how powerful archers are in this game. I hate to break it to you but that adds historical realism to it. So instead of nerfing them don't you think it would be a better idea for them to improve on their AI mechanics and improve the charge and shield wall abilities. If your army learns how to utilize their shields better. Or if you as the leader of the army position your troops in such a manner I.E I'm behind rock formations or in a forest. The same end goal can be accomplished without having to take a valuable unit and turn them into a trash unit. I totally get that having your army destroyed at long range is frustrating beyond belief but that's historical. And if both sides can't agree then maybe they should add an option that gives the player the ability to control how much damage the archers do and at what range.
Brother!! I think my stance was more that archers need a balance OUTSIDE of the archers. They don't need a nerf, the armor of other characters needs to be brought online. There are a number of mods that point out that the armor values in the game are not working as intended. I don't think that ARCHERS are the problem, I think that the game's recognition of armor is the issue. I think that archers should be doing exactly what they are doing, but I do also believe that armor needs to have some practical application outside of slowing your character down. There seems to be a HUGE fall off in damage received between tiers 1-5 and 6. Tier 6 feels like a sherman tank, tier 5 feels like cloth armor with slightly more absorption. I, in no way, think that archers need to be brought down, I think the aspects of the game need to be brought "up" if that makes sense
@@italianspartacus That absolutely makes sense. And I agree with you. And to be clear I wasn't calling you out. I'm calling out all of the people who when one aspect of a game is overperforming due to outside influence their first and only suggestion is to nerf it. I totally agree that armor is not working as intended. personally I think the best option would be to improve AI mechanics so the AI understands that a shield needs to be raised when advancing against a city castle or archer army. I think they need to be careful when doing the armor mechanics so as not to make long-range attacks completely useless. in my opinion I think it should be something like armor value will determine how effective Bows will be at long range. but the closer you get the more penetration value the arrows will have. Or something like crossbows will have extra penetration against Shields. I think they have a lot to improve on or think about, but I think the word Nerf should not have anything to do with it. I would also like to see cav be much more effective when charging enemy lines or at least not so stupid. I do appreciate your videos and your tutorial videos have been very helpful, So thanks for that.
Totally agree with you brother and I didn't think you were calling me out directly :) I agree.. The further the shot, the less the damage.. There is a velocity to all arrows and bolts, hence crossbows doing even more damage than bows in almost every scenario because of the missile speed. The AI used to use their shields really well, around v1.1 but then they got bugged.. And the AI's aim was increased right around then, so the result is archers that are WAY too deadly because the AI just wants to headbutt arrows
Just change bow/arrow damage to swing damage and keep crossbow/boltdamage as piercing. Not only will this change make a real difference between crossbows and bow damage wise but it will also make it historically accurate for all them historically accurate buff. Armor actually worked against arrows but not against bolts. PoP mod from warband had already done this, in there swing damage was C and piercing was P and blunt was B. C-damage did 80% dmg to armor, P-damage did 100% to armor and B-damage did 130% to armor. IDK how the dev missed this.
Thank you for not leaving out the vladian sergeants and the bannerknights! But you left out their biggest strength: Their reach. Their spears are the longest of all the non-pike-soldiers. That means Sergeants will be more useful (beeing shielded for shieldwall and longrange spear against mounted charges) and the Bannerknights will hit the opposing men before they can sink their lances into them (except for very specialiced Phalanx like the Pikemen). They currently do not couch their lances, but honestly it doesn't really matter. And while Vlandia has the greatest troops right now (#vladiaforever), when excluding the sharpshooters (since crossbows are so abysmal right now), I do think that bows need to be rebalanced a tiny bit. Yes armormod is nice... but that also harms crossbows (at least currently). Fians can only be taken out by a large cavalery charge that is led around the main force into their backs... and even then they put up a good fight. Put them in a siegedefense and you are like the elves defending helms deep in Battle for middlearth 2. Unconquerable!
So are the unit stats accurate now and not general placeholders ? The beta acknowledged it for a few units but .. i thought stats didn't mean much and they aren't the actual stats the unit has or uses. For example units have stats for weapons they don't have (maybe in tournament they do) people and modders tested this quite in depth. I would say gear matters more than stats and the way you play the units even more. 2 Handed non polearm units are very good in sieges pro tip ;) Overall the tier 5 imperial line (archers / infantry) with heavy armor is the best if you don't want to babysit your troops and get in on the actions.
Great info by far. After watching dozens of Bannerlord vids, this has been one of the most informative without wasting time on frivolous memes, jokes and other necessities. I'm itching to try out the Khuzait noble line now.
I mix Aserai palace guards into to my archer line a lot and have group 2 charge after the frontlines crash which makes them charge into melee leaving the archers behind. The voulger does look like the better option for this task cause they are probably much better at stopping cav so I'll have a look at them. Also I'm not sold on the effectiveness of 2 handers in sieges. They tend to stand around in front of the wall for too long without shields and get cut down by archers a lot.
The case for imperial units is that they are useful almost immediately. While you have to farm villages for fians.... you can easily recruit a bunch of recruits, fight 1 battle against 20 looters and at least 10 will upgrade to archers guaranteed. Fight another fight against looters and send in only recruits and bam you have another 10. Rinse and repeat. Getting load of archers this quickly as other faction is impossible and they only get better as they tier up. Yes they are not the best in their category but 2nd best is actually better if you can have vastly more of it.
I can't remember which unit, but there's another ground bow unit who has ~200 bow skill. I want to say it's the sprout line (So far have only found them via decimating minor factions and recruiting through being a prisoner).
Arboreal! I didn't put them on the list because currently, they are too hard to acquire reliably to really compete with say a Fian, which can be acquired either from Forest Bandits or training
@@italianspartacus, Oh, I mainly meant for the 2nd place spot. They're definitely still weaker than Fians without a doubt. I've been doing a "special" unit only playthrough, so I actively hunt down the merc groups lol.
@@italianspartacus, they have some decent uniques. Definitely have to make use of the mod to take on t5 and t6 prisoners though. Only one is super bugged and their lines best stat is around 40 pts or so. Look forward to the video!
No joke on the archers. Every battle, I put them on a hill and just a wall of troops in front. As soon as they are positioned, then the bodies hit the floor!
Not related to the video sorry but wanted to ask if anyone else is experiencing an issue with the unit groupings in the Party screen. I set the grouping on a type of troop to a different grouping like infantry to horse archer (ie a companion) but it reverts back to the troop's (and companion's) default over time, i.e. vlandian levy crossbow - I don't want them as part of #1 infantry, I'd prefer them to be with #2 archers. If I want a type of troop in a diff grouping, I have to make the change just before a battle. It's frustrating and why I don't do it often.
Regarding noble lines, there are more Imp factions to get your noble troops from, compared to Vlandias 1 area. Also Imp Horse archers are easiest final tier cav to get. Imp archers are easy to get and level, and Imp war horses are the cheapest war horse
Troop trees need to be reworked to prevent ability loss in higher tiers. Berserkers need a better armored second option so they can keep their shirts on at say, the cost of skill or other equipment, the vlandian Spearman line shouldn't have shields immediately taken away after tier 3, and one of the imperial infantry branches needs to keep the javelins. I'm sure there's more, but those really bother me. Also since I think peasants now upgrade to their cultural recruit, it would be cool to recruit peasants as bottom barrel daily options for players who just need bodies for the meat grinder, and fast. And a tier one noble for everyone to help in that regard too.
Triarii and Lake Rat Wreckers for best infantry. Second best bowman is the Veteran Forester. Second best horse archer is the Karakhuzait Elder. Thus far the only way I've found to acquire all ofthese are to capture and hire. Every play through has spawned the special units in different places and different amounts.
I have one guy only using captured and hired bandits. Just for the fun of it..his Sturgian, you know how they are. Bandits are really good troops for the money and they can all be upgraded into really good units if needed.
Will you ever make or post an edit/update to this video? I've been using this video as a means to find what troops to train overtime, but I've noticed a couple of differences, like the Sturgian Two handed and Sturgian shock troopers are different in 1.4.1 than they were in the previous patch that you made the video for. A quick reply will do wonders!
@@italianspartacus Much appreciated! I know I'm asking for alot at this point, but any big changes you think have already occurred in your personal list of what troop's have gone down or up your lists?
My army is always 90-100%"cavelry?".even with just 80-100 men in The party you can wipe armies of hundreds with it, its so OP😂 i usally start to focus on infantry after i have about 130 ish troops.
Minor clans are getting their own video :) because of their relative scarcity to recruit, I didn't include them here because there's no reliable way to get them outside of prisoners
Why didn't you mention the Sturgian Druzhinnik Champion??? It's hands down the best infantry in the game, and it spawns on a horse. I thought 'Oh what crap cavalry', but then I took them off their horse... 100 vs 500 and they killed all 500 cleanly. Then I took a town with the 85 remaining... The town had 600 defenders....
Khans guard are disgusting! Put them in mele against archers, omg they destroy with their glaives. Easily could argue they are the strongest overall unit
Great video! Motivates me to try out some troops I hadn't really considered before. One very minor quibble: You state that Vlandian Squires are easier to find than Imperial Vigla for their respective factional noble lines. As you mentioned earlier in video, village Powerful Landowners are the source of noble-line recruits. The settlement notables are randomized with each new campaign start, so there will be a different distribution, both in numbers and locations, of Powerful Landowners (and therefore noble-line recruits) in each game. So Squires might be easier to find than Vigla in current game, but next playthrough the reverse might be the case. (obviously same general point applies for all the noble lines, not just Squire/Vigla).
Absolute excellent point.. And you bring up a lot of good information there.. I will say though, I've still noticed more powerful land owners in Vlandia than the Empire. I had one save where there was maybe one or two in the empire. It was infuriating hahahah. But i probably shouldn't have used a generalization so I apologize for that!
The Vlandian Banner Knight is actually one of the least armoured heavy cavalry choices in the game, mostly thanks to that shitty peasants hoodie they wear. Druhzinik and Faris are actually better armoured, with the Faris having faster horses too. The fact that couched lance damage isn't all that great either really doesn't help either. The fact that cataphracts have longer lances doesn't help. They really need a mail coif, some improvements to cavalry ai. As they are, they just aren't great.
@@Craft97pl That's fine and all, but AI suck at couching lance. So on paper, the Banner Knight is supposed to have the hardest hit but in reality you'll seldom see them pull it off. Also couch lancing kind of sucks compared to just flat out swinging a slashing polearm from horseback. Wouldn't surprise me if Khan's guard overwhelm them in that field too.
Vladians are so damn good. Easy to get heavy cav, crossbowmen which work great with Armor Does Something mod and can CQC very well with their Pavise shields and decent armor and pretty much best infantry. Love em so much
Table of Contents:
2:43 - Archers
4:35 - Heavy Infantry
6:45 - Two Handed Infantry
8:51 - Spearmen
10:56 - Heavy Cavalry
13:00 - Archer Cav
15:22 - Throwing Cav
thought you forgot. thank you
brotherhood of the woods tree archers. are the best imo. im not sure why there so good but when i get 30 or 40 of them behind some imperial legionnaires i never lose. take some time to test em out?
What is batch experience??
Also, where can you get these patches??????????
@CYKA BLYAT95 1.3 beta branch. 7:54 Sturgian wolfheadnar was just a garbage in 1.2
Archer units must NOT be nerfed. Instead, armour needs to be buffed, as per the "armour does something" mod.
Agree. I would love to see the realism of barbed arrows, bodkin arrows and so on, against their respectable armors (needle bodkin are great against padded and chain, but bounce off of plate, for instance). Tod's Workshop does great experimentation on the differentials, that the M&B devs could stand to see - ua-cam.com/video/DBxdTkddHaE/v-deo.html
I second this. Top Tier armor is dogshit
This is right, and holy crap does it make a difference. I recently installed the mod and it makes dealing with forest bandits manageable. That and makes massing archers a flawed tactic instead of the worlds greatest.
Armour does something is a must have mod, but it sucks that u can't do realistic with it, or else it just makes archers useless completely.
Armor does neeed buff. That's piercing damage type need a rework
For my first ~100 hours in bannerlord, I misread Palatine Guard as Palpatine Guard xD
Same and i still call them that
Yeah and I misread imperial melaviaton even writing it I still don't know is this correct or no
@@brianz8361 Yeah idk either, I thought it was menavlition or something xd
So I'm not the only one
And/or Palantine
watching Sturgian Veteran Warriors just demolish a cavarly charge with their javelins = 10/10
Hahahaha it's so satisfying
I havent played the last patches but I really felt surtgian was a bit underwelming. how are they now?
Would it be possible to do a "pitfalls video"? Something like units not to use, and mistakes with companions, or times you really don't want to declare war. Quests that harder than they should be for the rewards...etc
I'm going to do a series of me rating each culture's units :)
Awesome!
Thank you
ItalianSpartacus definitely gonna sub to see this. How are you planning on formatting the vid? Will you account for terrain, siege, bandit camp settings? Either way I kno it’ll be good. Thnx
I think the Vlandian Sharpshooters don't get enough love. They have one of the slowest rates of fire, but they do insane amounts of damage, and they're pretty decent in melee. Empire has probably the best all around troop line up, but I think Vlandians come in as a close second, without having to deal with Empire territory placement.
I also disagree with the strength of archer cav. I've been playing around with them extensively, and one thing I've noticed is that while they overperform against mid tier troops, once they get to high tier troops their kill count starts to fall off. Additionally, a lot of the archer cav units get hunted down pretty easily, with only the noble line being safe from the terror of the super cavalry coming out from Vlandia and Empire. Considering both the Khuzaits and Aserai have a bit of a tough time massing noble units, that makes the losses you take in less than maxed noble units pretty tough to replace.
I think that's the thing. The large reason why archers are so effective is that the A.I. seems incapable of maintaining an elite force. I had about 12 sharpshooters and 17 palatine archer working side by side; and the former got about 18/22 kills and the later got 44/48. Largely because I was facing an army of nearly 300 mostly recruits which largely folded over when anything hit them. Of course, the 50 or so cav I had won the fight, but strictly speaking it's better to go archers in single player just simply because the armour pentitration rarely matters.
The billman and their evolution are incredible though, especially in siege defence and as a general sledge hammer, I have a unit of roughly 20 I try and keep around because those guys never fail to devastate on the charge, or even on siege defence/attack those guys have had incredible killing sprees. Only issue of course is that they are pretty exposed to archer fire and can be hard countered by that, and usually have a higher fatality count then most other elite unit's I've used so far. Vlander in general is a pretty incredible faction.
I like horse archers because they are excellent at tearing open enemy formations. If the enemy is turtling, just send your horse archers to wheel around them and pepper them with arrows. You're not necessarily trying to kill a lot of people, but trying to open up their lines for your other units to take advantage of.
Unfortunately, crossbow line is not quite good right now. Some bow actually have damage very close to the best crossbows avaible, and shields on back no longer block projectiles. And crossbow bolts still not have the damage bonus like arrows did. Hope Talesworld balance that, maybe scale down bows a bit? Kind of miss warband crossbowmen, especially in some mods where they changed the reload animation, that they turn their back towards the enemy while reloading.
@@gaiusjuliuspleaser That's why my preferred mid to late game army for field battles is roughly 40/60 or 30/70% horse archers / heavy horse respectively. Send the horse archers in to skirmish around the enemy as they normally would and it breaks up their formation, then order the heavy cav to charge, and watch the carnage unfold! If the enemy have a lot of cavalry themselves it's usually wise to call the horse archers back as you send the heavy horse in, so the latter can take the 'aggro' off them as it were, then they can be sent back into the fray. Perfect strat for Khuzait as they can provide both without nobles, allowing it to be a feasible tactic earlier in the game.
my 80+ horse archers can kill any 1000+ army though, use follow me then just run circle around enemy infantry while ignoring their calvary, use retreat when out of ammo and repeat. all reallistic difficulty btw.
need 100+ khuzait nomad and high level tactician to buffer the army size, tell them to retreat at the start of the battle. Cant have too many horse archers, you need them to be compact formation so enemy infantrys and achers line keep shuffle around and dont have time to shoot at you, enemy calvary accuracy is too low to care about, their horse will die fast anyway from your horse archers. Unless there are so many calvary that block your kiting path then you can kill them off yourself with noble bow 10 guys at a time and quickly retreat from battlefield before any of your men die.
Triarii seems to be missing from this list, but that might be because you'll need to recruit them from the prisoners tab after defeating any Legion of the Betrayed faction.
100% why they aren't on here.. Especially if legionaries get throwing weapons. If Triarii could be reliably recruited, they'd be ace tier for sure! They're one of my favorite units
I think an interesting idea for a video for you would be to take a look into all the minor faction units (lake rats, hidden hand, etc.) as some of these units do have higher stats than the standard unit lines.
Lake rats and forest people in particular have excellent high stat troops. Additionally legion of the betrayed has bar none the best melee infantry in the game. Triarii are no joke
Funny you bring that up because I'm working on it :)
@@italianspartacus Assuming it will include how to obtain these units as some I've never seen, outside of people on UA-cam using console commands/cheats (I believe)...
hidden hand on the other hand and the eleftaroi are.. confusing in how underporered they are
This is an amazing breakdown! Thanks for your disclaimers and your organization of the units for discussion. Now....back to blocking out the sun with my Emperor Palpatine Archers.
My army: Oops all horse archers.
Hahaahha "oh no.. How'd I recruit noticing but horse archers, whoooops "
ItalianSpartacus to be fair, most of them were recruits when I got them.
@@jlaw131985 best army though for raiding and pillaging.
Frank Spencer and chasing down other armies. I never have to siege because I just buy the fiefs.
@@jlaw131985 or you can just straight up execute all nobles like I did.
**Sad crossbowman noises**
I gotta say, vlandian sharshooters are honestly one of the best ranged units. Crossbows are seriously not to be messed with.
are they any good? like whats the point of crossbows in this game if theyshoot slower than bows
@@siegfriedgottz698 Crossbows usually have higher damage per shot and longer range than most or possibly even all bows.
@@siegfriedgottz698
Those crossbows pack an intense amount of punch compared to longbows, especially when led by crossbow skill focus leader. Good when concentrating fire on heavily armored units. Bane of players who don't have invested in shields, with or without armor.
Melee/Throwing units are exceptional in the short range shock before they enter melee. Notable in sieges at choke points with throwing leader.
@@siegfriedgottz698 longer range. more damage. and they are in my opinion way more accurate than all archers except fian champions
Kind of hope Talesworld adding a feature that allow player to bargain minor faction for thier respecrive recuits, maybe require perk in charm or rougery, some relation threshold, and limited number for a month or so. Captive conversion is not so reliable, and quite ramdon if you constantly taking in prisoners. IMO, on top of recuitment difficulty, minor faction troops usually have higher stats, seemingly in exchange of lesser armor, which not necessary make them all around better troop than the regular counterpart.
I kinda hope that with time as the game goes on and we get new features i would hope for caravans that can distribute faction troops. I have ran full nation armies like khuzait only and god do i hate having to trek back to the east just for recruits. This is something i could see be implemented. Would also become a necessity if they ever decide to give us the choice of custom world generation which would be crazy in terms of game replay-ability and unique experiences
In warband i had modification that alowed to create own unit and personalize equipment and mod when you had your own troop tree. I miss peasant with top tier armor and weapon :D
@Avatar Ang custom world generation isnt beyond the game's grasp, especially considering its amazing mod community. To be perfectly honest the current game map isnt even remotely close to what i would consider great considering if it is "hand crafted". i see nothing requiring the game to stick to just the one map and custom generation could easily expand the game's lifespan by years.
Excellent guide, and credit to you for delving deep into the mechanics, particularly the weapon load outs. You conflict with a lot of the guides I have seen, but what you say is more aligned with what I actually observe ingame. I see a lot of guides which toe the line of "this unit haz best stats, it iz the best" ... but building an army based solely on Imperial infantry, Palatines and horse archers, whilst it works "fine" ... seems to be open to a lot of counters. I have had some technically "powerful" armies overrun by peasant armies because they have a lot of skirmishers throwing javelins before they engage in melee. Goat farmers with big shields and lots of javs can make a technically "good" army look a bit silly at times. Similarly, during a siege attack, most of my imperial troops got skullfucked at the top of ladders, i was down, but one crazy Sturgian(?) axe wielding psychopath got on the parapet and basically pootled around the battlements killing every last defender and I somehow won.
Aseria specifically seem to have mad effectiveness on the open battlefield, even with basic troops (but perhaps this is balancing/bug issue which will be fixed)
Thank you for this video. Its taught me to pay a bit more attention to factors I dont normally consider.
For what its worth ... here are a few of my observations:
I agree 100% with Vlandian Sergeants, they are the bomb. They just seem to have a superb survival rate. Half of the value of elite troops is that they survive for the next battle.
Palatine Archers are superb default archer units. But not the best like most people say
Having a good lineup is great, but obsessing about having a "perfect" army of specific troops is a fools errand. Frequently some rando units in the mix can offer a counter
Khuzait Dharkans dont get the respect they deserve. They survive battles and do harm.
Horse archers are only useful if you go all-in. I have won battles just by getting 40-50 horse archers to follow me, then riding around an army. When they send out the cav I skirmish, if the general engages, he might die. Engaging with a LARGE force of horse archers can deplete the enemy cavalry, potentially kill their General, and then cause the whole army to chunder forward across the map towards your guys. And when they do, you can drift around behind or beside them ... shooting them in the back. Horse archers are superb in force and at high level, but if you only have a few and they are shit .. you will just be fish in a barrel for their archer units. Go large or go home.
Great video, thank you for really thinking about tactics.
You dont need nesserary perk to level up bandits troops into regular and noble units. When they are ready to upgrade put them into garrison to gastle or town with training grounds and wait couple days and they shoud have upgrade them another way to get put them into comppanion party and they will upgrade units when they battle.
You're absolutely correct and I made that point in the video :) BUT I think I made it sound like you still needed the perk so I'm sorry about that dude! In trying to make that portion of the video quick, I muddled my point. Doh!
@@italianspartacus Glad to help! I enjoy watching your contents about Bannerlord keep going buddy!
ItalianSpartacus my searaiders and Highwaymen don’t Upgrade in garrisons, but my Forest bandits do, even when i sell warhorses to the City or put them in my keep stash
@@laurenzreichelt4911 I was about to say the same thing about Sea Raiders. I think I upgraded it into a Varyag, but only when I pulled it out of the garrison after getting the Disciplinarian perk.
Great video! I would have loved a mention to foot skirmishers as well. In my Battanian campaign I love to use Wildlings because of how versatile they are. They can destroy charging enemies with harpoons while also being excellent in melee against infantry and they even carry a spear to fight cav!
Excellent point.. I think I falsely pumped them in to heavy infantry.. Wildlings are pretty bad ass
I have like 60 wildlings infront and around 40 Fianns at back,until any enemy reach they lose around half of the army and then after my horses charge they route.In every battle i lose from 1 to 5 soldiers only all in hardest diff.
Great video as always ! Love your content AND your voice ! You're very pleasant to listen to. I found you with the lore videos on the Warhammer Old World lore videos when playing Total War Warhammer without knowing anything about Warhammer. Never listened to a more pleasant and eloquent voice in the background while playing games.
On Bannerlord's units : Love your take on it and yet here's me hoping we will at some time in the future be able to recruit from minor factions ^^. Oh man, just thinking about the Legion of the Betrayed. Or the Lake Rats even.
thank you very much! hahah huge compliment :D
The Druzhinnik is still my favorite cav unit. I can only get like 3 at a time because it’s so hard to find Warrior Sons, but they rarely die and rack up kills for me
Thanks for the analysis. Would love to see a recap at the end of the video giving your top choices again. Or maybe post it as text on the Discord...?
I feel like Aserai Heavy Mameluke Cavalry are an overall better choice than the Buccelarii. The Mamelukes get a shield which is huge in sieges and the Buccelarii also miss out on good horse armor. Also a majority of the Mameluke upgrade line is on horseback.
Very good point, but you're looking at two really hard tiers to get to that point, without much armor or a shield. Imperial bowmen are way easier to level in my opinion
I have built up a stack of these in my mostly Vlandian party and they rake in a lot if kills.
I believe they have a much stronger bow than Bucelarii.
They are not as good as Khans Guard, but I'd put them in second place for their decent overall armor and because they are easily obtained in large numbers (unlike Khans Guards and Bucellarii).
Archers are master of this game. Unless you use battle realism mode. They have to shoot 45 angle to anything more then 20 meteres from them. And at mass to hit anything.
I always use khusaite horse archers. Just run around and around till everyone dies. They could literally out number me by a 100. still lose to horse archers.
Love the Bucellarii - one small problem though, they require a war horse to upgrade and that may conflict with other heavy cav upgrade. But once they get going .... :D
Ohh man, great point. THat does really deplete from your war horse stock. Hopefully they level up fast enough as archers that they come in before you need war horses hahah
yeah, my favorite too, since Imperial recruits are "everywhere" and since they are at the end of the archers tree they are rather easy to upgrade consistently without too much effort.
@@italianspartacus But, they are really worth it :D. If I know I'll go for them, I'll try to keep an eye out for any war horses starting early and never pass up a good deal :D.
I'm playing a campaign now, on easy granted, but I've managed to pull off a win with an army of 180 versus just over of 1000. Half of that were Bucellarii and then a bunch of Batanian Fian line troops plus bandits that upgrade into Fians and like 15 Imperial Legionaries as a first line :D. Got lucky with the map and had a really steep hill at the back of the map with a mountain behind so no flanking or encircling. 19 dead, 26 wounded on my side and we killed 831 of the enemy - granted they probably had something like 75% recruits but also some good troops. And the Bucellarii really slayed (put the on F6 as soon as the combat began). Worth every gold coin I paid for them :)))
I dont think them only getting a horse at their final upgrade is a problem. They server as good archers and then they are upgraded into really powerful heavy horse calv
@@martinez206045 i find the game to be much much different between easy and realistic difficulty. I typically leave the player received damage to 2/3 (because i would like to not have to hide behind my troops shitting myself when an arrow or javelin flies by) to have more fun but man when friendly troops only take even 2/3 damage it makes your party stupid strong and doesnt represent actual unit strengths and weaknesses
For a mutli-national mercenary band, I use:
(normal troop line since noble ones are hard to come by)
Sturgia: Veteran warrior as my defense infantry
Aserai: Master Archer as my range troop
Battania: Veteran Falxman as my offense infantry
Vlandia: Vanguard as my lance calvary
Khuzait: Heavy horse archer as my horse archer
And since imperial troops are easy to recruit and well-rounded, they are used to fit in the roles I lack from time to time, since their normal line has good infantry (with spears), two hand infantry, crossbowman (I think they are better than imperial bowman when pairing with other ranged units), horse archer and their noble lance cav is relatively easier to get with the big recruiting area
how to keep those Falx bastards alive though? They always die, even in seperate infantry groups covered by shieldwalls infront.
I haven’t played a crap ton for a couple of weeks, but when I played earlier on, I noticed that my sturgian veteran warriors often survived much more often than my sturgian shock troops.
Yes, they do. In theory, the Shock Troop seems better equipped against all kinds of enemies, but the weaker armor really shows in the death count. I prefer the Veteran Warrior.
same here
same here
I once noticed while I raid a hideout that Shock-troop didn’t use his shield even though he has it so he died in front of me.
I use Veteran instead since then till I heard someone says they win all 1v1 that I start to use them again but I think Veteran and Legionary are more durable in my style because for me infantries are use to hold the line for my cavalry so survivability is the most important factor for me.
same here
cavalry only works when you lead them into the enemies, just command charge makes them loose cohesion instantly and just go at it randomly. either let them follow you on horseback or steer them with F1 to lead them through infantry lines, but keep an eye out to not go in full lines of infantry since they will get stuck and get rekt by spears. For the rest its usually pretty much follow the noble lines for best units in the game. I would argue that the palantine guard rival the master archers though, since they have I think better armor, but then again, Fians... What about the druzhinnik champions for cavalry? they seem to survive pretty much every battle I have had.
I do this to. Best is to charge later on in the battle from the side. Also something that maybe gets fixed is the fact that just having your cav on follow you can disorganize the enemy line so hard without even actually attacking making it easy targets for your archers.
yeah, I would agree. Currently, horse archers have far better AI control than Cavls, with horse archers at start battle pretty much F6 will let them go circle the enemy from the right side flank unless they are being challenged by other calvs.
what I normally do now is send horse arches out with F6, and lead calvs to go to the left, let infantry and foot archers charge in the middle. as soon as horse archers finish their first circle I will lead the calv to charge in from the left to mess with their foot archers. and by this time the foot soldiers will be catching up and finishing off the front lines. normally when I double back do a second charge the enemy's infantry will be already gone, only leaving foot archers to be picked off.
@@jeroen3657 yeah, that makes sense historically though
Having tons of incredibly fast warriors with pointed sticks that will instantly kill you and a line of archers just wsiting to rain hell upon you will usually be quite scary
I'm playing a Sturgia campaign right now, and they've rapidly become my favorite faction in the game. Their shock troops and veteran infantry work really well together, and their archers provide some nice support.
I haven't played in about a week so this may have changed but my mismatch army has 2 real standouts. Sturgian shock troops and imperial Palatine guard. Especially the shock troops, I've taken on Western empire armies outnumbering me almost 2-1 and my roughly 15 shock troops usually manage a 5-1 KDR in open fields, with the Palatine guard getting similar results. Shock troops definitely live up to their name
Man I didn’t even know about the noble lines
I’ve been waiting to get my disciplinarian perk bc I just knew I’d get to up grade bandits to bad assery
The best horse archer is actually Aserai, because they have noble bows with base 80 dmg. The KG and heavy HA only have 64 dmg bows.
it is abbout accuraci too and you can change troops you know to make it how you want, it module/sandboxcore/moduledata/spnpccharacters
khans guard is the best
Elite Cataphract is grossly overrated:
Their lance is two-handed, meaning they can’t be couched or be used with a shield.
Their superior armor is largely useless because when charging, any damage taken is drastically amplified and armor does less to save their lives than sheer luck.
They don’t have alternative means of attack and get stuck onto each other and the enemies when they bunch up and charge in.
Their horses are the slowest war horse in the game.
Aserai Faris, on the other hand... Are MUCH more deadly and versatile with their nuclear powered throwing weapons and highest-tier war horses, not to mention the armor is only slightly weaker.
Yup, I love skirmishing Cav, but the Aserai Faris brings a whole new meaning to skirmishing cav, their Sturgian counter part is like a looter compared to them. Also if you though EC was good then most likely you have never tried Druzhinnik from Strugia, just 3+f6 never worry about them in that battle.
To be honest, Khuzait Darkhans and Marksmen are WAY too good right now - the horse archers are bad enough, but the infantry and archers following that up just make it too much. And the AI just does not know how to handle horse archers either, so the Khuzaits (along with getting so many cavalry means +30% to their auto-resolve) tend to snowball unless specifically gutted early on. IMO, if the Khuzaits are going to get so many easily accessed horse archers, they need to lose their elite infantry and foot archers (if not get rid of their foot archers entirely) - as it stands it's just too much without an elite army that can specifically cut it to ribbons... and even then it'll be hard as hell because of how much damage they'll do. Good luck dealing with them without superior numbers when it's the hogepoge mix the AI uses, especially if you're not the army commander, because the AI just CANNOT figure out how the hell they're supposed to fight horse archers.
To be honest, they're worse than the Battanians. At least with Battania, their archers are limited in numbers and you can navigate around them if you need to. The Khuzaits just get tons of cav - as they should! - but their infantry in turn is just too good for what should be their weakness for having such a focus on horse archers.
Agreed. At least with the Khuzait horse archers, the player can take them on relatively easily (assuming you have heavy armor), if you get in amongst their horde with a solid two handed axe or glaive. Their low armor means you can cut through them like butter, and since they’re not left handed, if you stay on their right they can’t shoot you. Obviously, the AI can’t do this, so they’ll get mulched by these 100 horse archer hordes that khuzait armies often run around with. But on top of that you have to deal with a shit load of heavy armored archers and darkhans who have near infinite morale, that can laser you. I’ve been knocked out more times from khuzait ground troops than khuzait cav.
Historically Mongol/Turk armies were the Best in those time era anyway
i've seen a marmaluke palace guard absolutely destroy troops while defending a ladder attack in a siege... since then i always make sure my garrisons have a handful of them... i don't know how they compare to others but i was sold by the visual experience.
Hahahaha they're SO strong, but I found the Voulgier to be stronger and the Ulfhednar easier to get to max level
Another detail to keep an eye out for: horse barding (something I find lacking in the Sturgian Raider and Bucellarii cases, 10 and 15 armor vs 58 and 38 of the respective Aserai and Khuzait alternatives)
GREAT Call, totally forgot to mention that!
On this topic the Mameluk Regulars (the first horse level) are melee lancers and have little to no barding and armor. This makes them excruciatingly hard to level, regularly dying to looters as tier 3 units no less, this makes them a large waste of resources and time for a subpar horsearcher. Aserai get the short end of the stick in everything really....
Yeah, a stack of throwing something would be nice to compensate. Might even be safer to level them dismounted and mixed with other infantry just in front of them.
The Khan's Guard only has one stack of arrows instead of two like Kheshig (their previous upgrade line), making Kheshig actually a better horse archer for sustained skirmish.
I agree with you, but I'll be honest - I've never seen the AI run out. I'm also not really looking, but I feel like the AI gets to cheat with their arrows
@@italianspartacus They definitely can. During a bandit camp raid, I watched my one archer's quiver and the arrows actually began to deplete until it was empty and he drew his sidearm. The archers DO scavenge for arrows, though, so if there is return fire coming your way then it's like a free reload for your archers.
One thing I noticed, though, is that archers do not use the barrels of arrows to reload during sieges (or in some bandit camps). At one camp raid, I continuously reloaded my own arrows and shot the arrows into the ground at the feet of my archers so that they would scavenge the arrows and would do that to make sure they had a full quiver for the next wave of bandits we took on.
@@italianspartacus some time i fight 400-500 army with ~100 horse archers, they do run out of arrow even with 2 stacks, then they start to charge into enemy infantries and get killed, i have to retreat after fighting for awhile to reset the arrows, in order to not losing any troop
But the Khan's Guard used their giant glaive when they ran out of arrows.. They're crazy good
@@aleluve13 The primary purposes of horse archers are for skirmishing, not charging
If I play as Khuzait, I don't want to lose Kheshig/Khan's Guard at all and will use Khuzait Lancer (or other culture's cavalry) for charging
1. hunt some steppe bandits 2. take captives 3. recruit them 4. conquer the world
Gengis khan right here folks!
@@jasonedemburgo8967 thats my character name in the game
Really good info/vid, i play for a week but i agree on every statement about these units its exactly what i have in my army comp!and the glaive is not only mot op weapon iame it also sells for a fortune !
My favorite two handed infantry is the Aserai Palace guard. They chew through everything with their axes and they have good armor. They would always get a crap ton of kills in my games.
Nicely done vid Sir! Also I'd like to share some thought of mine:
Heavy infantry: before the buff, Vlandian Sergeant was very sluggish because with all the gear and armor, they only have 60 athletic skill, now with the buff, they are more or less the same unit as Legionary with worse armor overall, and both can spawn with the mace. Sturgian veteran warrior is also very good, if only they don't have that chance of spawn with the bad shield, they trade some armor for better offensive power of throwing weapon. With the latest patch buff and shield wall collision fix, sturgian troops now form the best shield wall of the game. Aserai vet infantry and battanian wildling also work really well as frontline OFFENSIVE infantry, but can also work as skirmisher. Wilding is more durable at the moment, only because the Aserai have really bad head armor (which will likely be changed) and tiny shield.
Archer: a shout out to Palatine Guards, sure in the latest patch they have 30 less bow skill than Aserai Master Archer and only one quiver, but their heavy armor (higher than Legionary) and very nice one-handed sword will likely make up for it. They can be use as heavy infantry as well, in fact, they are the only kind of archers I feel fine while left undefended on the battlefield for how tough and close-combat effective they are.
Two-handed/pole-arm troop: I prefer the Imperial elite menavliaton over the Voulgier, they are heavily armored, and the normal/fine steel menavliation has better reach and longer blade so the AI will get maximum damage more often. Also the Mameluke palace guard is strong and well-armored too, their axe are really mean, but they dont have the reach advantage of polearm troops.
Heavy shock cav: Vlandian Banner knight (VBK) and Elite Cataphract (EC) have different playstyle. For VBK it's usually charge, get couch dmg, retreat, regroup, repeat. You dont want them to fooling around with enemy infantry since they only have 174 total armor for a T6 heavy cav, which is around the same as their T5 sergeant (~170). EC, on the other hand, does not have that amazing couch lance damage, they can't even use their lance with a shield but it out-ranged any other cav polearm and most of infantries. Coupled with their whooping 214 total armor rating (highest in the game) they have no problem messing around with other infantries, get these guys if you want a charge-them-and-forget cav. Faris Vanguard is like a heavy/skirmisher cav hybrid, do well in both roles.
Horse archer: another shout out for Mameluke heavy cav. In term of fire power they are in the middle between Khan's guard and Bucellarii, and they only have one quiver. But they come with a very nicely armored horse, and a sword and shield combo as a backup make them very versatile in many combat situations.
Awesome list brother :) thank you for the explanations
Skill level absolutely matters.
The amount of kills that Battanian Fian Champions get when compared to Battanian Fians is immense! The only real difference in terms of their ranged power is the substantial jump in bow skill.
I have to believe the same applies to melee units, as well.
*Edit: I also think the Battanian Fian line is beyond overpowered. The Fian Champions have literally 100 more bow skill than the tier 5 archers of any other faction. Their output is disgustingly good.
İ love them
well , i ve done a full Imperial crossbow army (around 100 men) it was shredding all open field battles when placed in a line. But struggled like hell in sieges
As someone who loves and has even specced out my character as a Khan’s Guard, I can confirm their glory. I will also admit that I fear the Faris. Whenever I wheel my glorious horde of khan’s guard towards the enemy... I make sure there are no skirmisher cavalry alive first and foremost.
A comprehensive list of the best units in Mound&Blade:
1) Horse Archers
Hahahaha
@@italianspartacus You know it's true. There is no counter to 200 horse archers just running circles around your troops.
well you need large supply line to feed all those horses but in game you can just buy 100+ days worth of supply from visit a town, so .....
@@benzosk2604 Or...you know...you just visit any village that has horses next to it on the map.
Horse Archers were quite OP in real-life history as well. Ever hear of the Huns?
Personally I don't think archers need their stats adjusted because archers in all redards are supposed to be op, they changed the field of battle. If anything just make them cost more or put limits on them, keep their stats but make it harder to field tons of them
I think that the change should be more related to armor, not the archers themselves. Totally agree
To get a bunch of battanian fians is really easy. Attack forest bandits and take prisoners (or if the difference in party size is big enough they will join you) then recruit the prisoners one by one. Then just do battle with them until your forest bandits are ready to upgrade. Place them in a castle for a day and they will upgrade to battanian fians.
Even the intro to this taught my noob ass something, I've been leaving my best units in garrisons and only go get them when major wars break out while I take all my wimpy units out with me to level them up, this changes everything haha
While I appreciate the option to have mixed troops, I really wish the game made a mixed army more difficult to maintain and create. It sorta loses the flavor of your chosen nation if you have no benefits or detriments depending on where you recruit from.
This is something I hope they consider addressing in patches. Have foreign troops cost inf, or make them far more expensive. Honestly I think the troops are much too cheap as is.
So there are like.. Hidden morale penalties, but I agree.. Maybe increased wage demand, more likely to leave when not paid/over troops. I think that's something we really need is troop loyalty.. If something has recently been recruited, then that's the first to leave when it comes to any time that troops would abandon
Didn't there used to be morale loss in warband?
They should be converted into your choosen factions troops with different stats as that’s what would happen when recruiting from a foreign land only captured armies Or divisions should stay as there respected unit and line
@@tugger it affected party morale, there was no point getting troops from other factions in that game.
My favourite moment ever in the game is when inhad just elite chatafracts and I charged strait at a much larger army that was like entirely recites and archers like no spears or long wepons what so ever and it was like a hot knife through butter
My friend was playing bannerlord on my pc and during a siege he died and he and me watched a vlandian voulgier get like 8 kills alone before dying and we kept saying he was cracked
Mamaluke Palace Guard is quite awesome for me. Good armour, good throwing, and large axes. If you let them charge into an enemy line, they'll take losses but the line will be shattered, pretty much winning you the battle. Also works great in sieges where the walls are already down.
If you need to level underwhelming units like the Sturgian Woodsman, get a batch of them, set them on their own control group (ie set to unit 5, skirmishers) and then chase after units of looters. When you enter battle, hit f4 (hold fire), the units control group and hit f4 again, allowing them to fire, then have them charge. This will let your underwhelming units that you want to level go solo vs looters, allowing for easy leveling.
Just be aware that when near settlements your control groups above 4 will sometimes bug out and place your units FAR in advance of the rest of your forces
theres a mod that fixes raise the meek perk its fast now 2 day usually can upgrade to tier 2 with no fight
Faris have great stats and equipment on paper but is actually really hard to use. The biggest problem is their excellent riding skill and awesome Aserai horse making them way too fast for their own good. If you don't micro them and let them loose, their high speed means the javelin throws are terribly inaccurate. Then they quickly run out of their javelins (having only one pouch). They will charge enemy infantry. The problem is that infantry in bannerlord judge horse speed with 100% accuracy and never miss unless you juke them out. Coupled with the fast speed of their horse, my Vanguard Faris often gets one shot by some bottom tier spearman. I have had mixed Cavalry armies for a while and I lose them faster than any other noble cav. In practice it is best to group them to their own group and they absolutely rekt slower horse archers especially from the Khuzaits.
I'm starting to really notice that horse archers are strong but need some solid micro to maximize them. Putting them on advance is the way to go.. They'll stay at max range.. Then use charge when you are okay with them engaging if they get counter charged
11:22 Cataphracts are beasts and rightly so. One of their most famous battles was the battle of Carrhae a Roman army personally funded by the richest citizen at the time Crassus (The man who defeated Spartacus) The Parthian king used his land forces to deal with traitors that helped the Romans. He send his general Surena to distract the Roman army of 45.000 with 9000 cav archers and 1000 Cataphracts. Long story short it ended with them loosing only 38 Cataphracts. 20.000ish Romans died 10.000 were captured and Rome suffered a terrible defeat and lost an couple Eagles thus their honor.
And the Parthian King was such a giant jealous cunt when he heard about this glorious victory his loyal general achieved...He had Surena executed. I honestly feel bad for Surena.
Dave Vd yeah, roman chataprac is rip off of parthian/persian chataprac
@@tafad5138 I can't blame them for copying the weapon that handed them one of their worst defeats ever. Like for real 30.000+ vs 38 ? That's amazing no matter how you look at it. I'll be they were laughing their ass off.
Another great moment for the Parhians was when Crassus send his son with 1300 Gaulic cav 500 archers and a few Cohorts to drive away their horse archers. Archers pretended to flee they went in balls deep and guess what they found. An entire line of Parthian Catahpracts in front, archers behind. They got slaughtered. When Crassus rushed to their aid he found his son's head stuck on a spear.
Except horse archers played a more important role in that battle than cataphracts. That, and blunders on part of the Roman leadership.
Funny how the same Parthian cataphracts got destroyed by Ventidius Bassus on 3 major occassions in a clear avengement of Carrhae and to put it very simply, if the cataphracts were that great, soldiers from the desert wouldn't have been able to decimate their empire.
@@eldeebcampeador Tried finding more about him but only got weird christian shit. There are many factors to war just saying better troops win always no matter the circumstances is just wrong.
First they must have had inept commanders, I found a few instances where Cataphracts got defeated by outflanking or by Alexander...But that's cheating that brilliant muppet never lost a battle with his Phalax.
Surena was rather brilliant which brings me to army compisition. He used 9000 cav archers to pelt the enemy and while they were defendibg 1000 Cataphracts charged and beat them back. He repeated this untill the Romans got destroyed. Since I couldn't find more about the battles in which they lost I can't judge it.
Ofc they can be beaten but it often resolves around superior tactics and flanking. Not charging in head first.
While I agree, the Fian Champion is by far the best archer, I actually find I enjoy the Imperial Sergeant Crossbowmen as a better second place than the veteran archer or even the vlandian crossbow line. The heavy armor, high damage crossbow, sword AND shield for melee...these guys are absolutely brutal for softening up the enemy and then reinforcing the depleted frontlines once their bolts are spent. And, when it comes to defending walls, I think they may be even better than Fians. They perform better in melee in my experience and so when the enemy reaches the wall, sergeant crossbowmen will usually make short work of them.
I thought the Vlandian Sergeants also carried a polearm as well as the shield and one handed? They’re my favorite infantry unit because they can counter cav and are really sturdy fighters in melees
Wait didn't I say that they did!!? Dammit, that was like.. one of the biggest driving factors behind selecting them for their spot! Why.. am i... stupid
Also,they look epic with that awesome cape
@@italianspartacus haha it happens,, anyway I'm keeping myself subscribed :[]
Do NOT touch Sturgian Ulfhednars. Despite the buff to 2h and Atheltics, these guys get melted by anything they touch because of a clear lack of armor. If you want beast mode 2h units. Get the Sturgian Shock Trooper instead. They have an enormous round shield, good heavy armor, and rock a powerful 2h polearm that they use for close quarter fighting.
I've always liked the fian champions. Long love battania long live king caladog
I have a mix of horse archers and cavalry. Aserai, Imperial, Khuzait and Ben Zilal
Loving the game, but I do reckon the units need a little more balancing to better reflect their lore. The Sturgia buff is a good sign though.
Can't help feel the Imperial factions are a little too strong atm. They're supposed to be well armoured and well rounded, but they end up with some of the best infantry and heavy cavalry in the game, which allows them to straight up overshadow Sturgia and Vlandia.
Also damn, no idea why people have the impression that Battania's regular infantry roster sucks. Its perfectly good and matches up well with everyone else in all but defence. Even their cavalry have done alright by me- just try not to use them like Cataphracts or Khan's guard.
All that being said though, I like how you can do just fine just taking units from a single faction.
Quick way to level woodsmen and brigands; assign them all to their own skirmisher unit then farm looters by putting that unit in front of your infantry line on loose formation. Hold all fire on everyone else and let them throw away. Even in melee the woodsmen can handle themselves against looters. Or just advance your infantry before the lines meet to be safe. I wish I could play the 1.3 branch. Sadly, battles slow to an absolute crawl no matter my settings. Sturgians are my favourite faction too.
All of this falls apart as soon as you install mods that makes armor stronger ;(
like.
RealArmor + Realist Battles
I also installed Noble Troops, which make your heavy calavry superior!
I just cannot play with the vanilla units anymore.
it's so satisfying to see your 30 Battanian fian champions demolish 150+ men with ease.
Thats really helpful. Thank you
fuck well 2nd i guess :D
You're the REAL number one, Kay. I'm streaming in two and a half hours. I want to see you there. And then at every stream this weekend. You're staying with us brother, none of that business you spoke about last stream. I am an extremely depressive individual, and have been my entire life.. We're all fighting the same war, just a different battle. I want to see you turn up to every stream. Even if to say hi and that you're alright. If you need someone to talk to... Join the discord, we're all. Here for you
@@italianspartacus Thanks my man. i was in a really dark place in my mind the past few days. However if i would do the act of no return i would cause so much damage to all the people who care. I know im not alone in this and there are many others who have to overcome this mountain. Sometimes it just gets to much but bad days are always better then no days at all. I will most certainly check your stream today.
Yeah man I totally understand and I'm glad that's where your mind is at. Just gotta remember that you NEED bad days. They color the good ones and make the victory all the sweeter. Love you brother, see you in the stream
My single unit of vlandian voulgier got 12 kills once on a siege attack
Voulgier means, "absolute monster and beast of close combat" in French.... Okay no it doesn't but still hahaha
So for the elite cataphract and other noble lines, I've found that going to villages and seeing if they have a quest about deserters and then doing that quest gets you quite a few noble units as prisoners
The best and easiest line is: join someone, lead an army of you and your companion party non stop, get 125 leadership, stack up on level 5 bandit prisoners, and boom, full army of noble line soilders.
Banner Knight Rush from rear and flanks is my META
Hammer and anvil
F6 your horse archers, shield wall your infantry, spread out your archers, and personally lead your cav to crush the enemy cav, followed by the enemy's rear!
I'm sorry but I'm going to say it. You guys need to stop bitching about how powerful archers are in this game. I hate to break it to you but that adds historical realism to it. So instead of nerfing them don't you think it would be a better idea for them to improve on their AI mechanics and improve the charge and shield wall abilities. If your army learns how to utilize their shields better. Or if you as the leader of the army position your troops in such a manner I.E I'm behind rock formations or in a forest. The same end goal can be accomplished without having to take a valuable unit and turn them into a trash unit. I totally get that having your army destroyed at long range is frustrating beyond belief but that's historical. And if both sides can't agree then maybe they should add an option that gives the player the ability to control how much damage the archers do and at what range.
Brother!! I think my stance was more that archers need a balance OUTSIDE of the archers. They don't need a nerf, the armor of other characters needs to be brought online. There are a number of mods that point out that the armor values in the game are not working as intended. I don't think that ARCHERS are the problem, I think that the game's recognition of armor is the issue. I think that archers should be doing exactly what they are doing, but I do also believe that armor needs to have some practical application outside of slowing your character down. There seems to be a HUGE fall off in damage received between tiers 1-5 and 6. Tier 6 feels like a sherman tank, tier 5 feels like cloth armor with slightly more absorption. I, in no way, think that archers need to be brought down, I think the aspects of the game need to be brought "up" if that makes sense
@@italianspartacus That absolutely makes sense. And I agree with you. And to be clear I wasn't calling you out. I'm calling out all of the people who when one aspect of a game is overperforming due to outside influence their first and only suggestion is to nerf it. I totally agree that armor is not working as intended. personally I think the best option would be to improve AI mechanics so the AI understands that a shield needs to be raised when advancing against a city castle or archer army. I think they need to be careful when doing the armor mechanics so as not to make long-range attacks completely useless. in my opinion I think it should be something like armor value will determine how effective Bows will be at long range. but the closer you get the more penetration value the arrows will have. Or something like crossbows will have extra penetration against Shields. I think they have a lot to improve on or think about, but I think the word Nerf should not have anything to do with it. I would also like to see cav be much more effective when charging enemy lines or at least not so stupid. I do appreciate your videos and your tutorial videos have been very helpful, So thanks for that.
Totally agree with you brother and I didn't think you were calling me out directly :) I agree.. The further the shot, the less the damage.. There is a velocity to all arrows and bolts, hence crossbows doing even more damage than bows in almost every scenario because of the missile speed. The AI used to use their shields really well, around v1.1 but then they got bugged.. And the AI's aim was increased right around then, so the result is archers that are WAY too deadly because the AI just wants to headbutt arrows
Just change bow/arrow damage to swing damage and keep crossbow/boltdamage as piercing. Not only will this change make a real difference between crossbows and bow damage wise but it will also make it historically accurate for all them historically accurate buff. Armor actually worked against arrows but not against bolts. PoP mod from warband had already done this, in there swing damage was C and piercing was P and blunt was B. C-damage did 80% dmg to armor, P-damage did 100% to armor and B-damage did 130% to armor. IDK how the dev missed this.
I enjoy the battanian wildling line for a line of infantry with large shields and throwing so they pepper frontal assaults.
Those some bad mamma jammas just Sherking fools
+1 A favourite of mine too
@@christophertaylor841 Same for me. Their armor is among the lowest of all shield infantry tho and their shields have really low hp.
Thank you for not leaving out the vladian sergeants and the bannerknights!
But you left out their biggest strength:
Their reach. Their spears are the longest of all the non-pike-soldiers. That means Sergeants will be more useful (beeing shielded for shieldwall and longrange spear against mounted charges) and the Bannerknights will hit the opposing men before they can sink their lances into them (except for very specialiced Phalanx like the Pikemen). They currently do not couch their lances, but honestly it doesn't really matter.
And while Vlandia has the greatest troops right now (#vladiaforever), when excluding the sharpshooters (since crossbows are so abysmal right now), I do think that bows need to be rebalanced a tiny bit. Yes armormod is nice... but that also harms crossbows (at least currently). Fians can only be taken out by a large cavalery charge that is led around the main force into their backs... and even then they put up a good fight.
Put them in a siegedefense and you are like the elves defending helms deep in Battle for middlearth 2. Unconquerable!
was a pleasure :D thanks so much for your points man, really well said hehe
So are the unit stats accurate now and not general placeholders ? The beta acknowledged it for a few units but .. i thought stats didn't mean much and they aren't the actual stats the unit has or uses. For example units have stats for weapons they don't have (maybe in tournament they do) people and modders tested this quite in depth. I would say gear matters more than stats and the way you play the units even more. 2 Handed non polearm units are very good in sieges pro tip ;) Overall the tier 5 imperial line (archers / infantry) with heavy armor is the best if you don't want to babysit your troops and get in on the actions.
MOST of them are.. most .. some do still have some wonky stats, but they're way better than they were :D
Great info by far. After watching dozens of Bannerlord vids, this has been one of the most informative without wasting time on frivolous memes, jokes and other necessities. I'm itching to try out the Khuzait noble line now.
I mix Aserai palace guards into to my archer line a lot and have group 2 charge after the frontlines crash which makes them charge into melee leaving the archers behind. The voulger does look like the better option for this task cause they are probably much better at stopping cav so I'll have a look at them. Also I'm not sold on the effectiveness of 2 handers in sieges. They tend to stand around in front of the wall for too long without shields and get cut down by archers a lot.
The case for imperial units is that they are useful almost immediately. While you have to farm villages for fians.... you can easily recruit a bunch of recruits, fight 1 battle against 20 looters and at least 10 will upgrade to archers guaranteed. Fight another fight against looters and send in only recruits and bam you have another 10. Rinse and repeat. Getting load of archers this quickly as other faction is impossible and they only get better as they tier up. Yes they are not the best in their category but 2nd best is actually better if you can have vastly more of it.
Its fairly simple to go into the unit files and give the fian champions 2h swords
I can't remember which unit, but there's another ground bow unit who has ~200 bow skill. I want to say it's the sprout line (So far have only found them via decimating minor factions and recruiting through being a prisoner).
Arboreal! I didn't put them on the list because currently, they are too hard to acquire reliably to really compete with say a Fian, which can be acquired either from Forest Bandits or training
@@italianspartacus, Oh, I mainly meant for the 2nd place spot. They're definitely still weaker than Fians without a doubt.
I've been doing a "special" unit only playthrough, so I actively hunt down the merc groups lol.
Oh that's damn awesome. I'm working on my minor clan video for this week to really explore all of em :)
@@italianspartacus, they have some decent uniques. Definitely have to make use of the mod to take on t5 and t6 prisoners though.
Only one is super bugged and their lines best stat is around 40 pts or so.
Look forward to the video!
I already got the Disciplinarian perk but It still says I need that perk in order to promote the Battanian Fian. Any help?
Hmmm... It SHOULD work.. in theory.. hopefully a bug fix on monday?
No joke on the archers. Every battle, I put them on a hill and just a wall of troops in front. As soon as they are positioned, then the bodies hit the floor!
Cue guitar shred and break down hahaha
Not related to the video sorry but wanted to ask if anyone else is experiencing an issue with the unit groupings in the Party screen. I set the grouping on a type of troop to a different grouping like infantry to horse archer (ie a companion) but it reverts back to the troop's (and companion's) default over time, i.e. vlandian levy crossbow - I don't want them as part of #1 infantry, I'd prefer them to be with #2 archers. If I want a type of troop in a diff grouping, I have to make the change just before a battle. It's frustrating and why I don't do it often.
Unfortunately it's a known bug that is hopefully fixed soon!
60% Fian champions covered by 40% heavy inf, easy peezy
Regarding noble lines, there are more Imp factions to get your noble troops from, compared to Vlandias 1 area. Also Imp Horse archers are easiest final tier cav to get. Imp archers are easy to get and level, and Imp war horses are the cheapest war horse
Totally agree with you brotha
Troop trees need to be reworked to prevent ability loss in higher tiers. Berserkers need a better armored second option so they can keep their shirts on at say, the cost of skill or other equipment, the vlandian Spearman line shouldn't have shields immediately taken away after tier 3, and one of the imperial infantry branches needs to keep the javelins. I'm sure there's more, but those really bother me. Also since I think peasants now upgrade to their cultural recruit, it would be cool to recruit peasants as bottom barrel daily options for players who just need bodies for the meat grinder, and fast. And a tier one noble for everyone to help in that regard too.
Triarii and Lake Rat Wreckers for best infantry. Second best bowman is the Veteran Forester. Second best horse archer is the Karakhuzait Elder. Thus far the only way I've found to acquire all ofthese are to capture and hire.
Every play through has spawned the special units in different places and different amounts.
Honestly I would've thought mameluke over bucellerii because the stats are similar but mamlukes have a shield
From my own playing, I feel the imperial horse archers horses feel slower than say khusaites.
I have one guy only using captured and hired bandits. Just for the fun of it..his Sturgian, you know how they are. Bandits are really good troops for the money and they can all be upgraded into really good units if needed.
Will you ever make or post an edit/update to this video? I've been using this video as a means to find what troops to train overtime, but I've noticed a couple of differences, like the Sturgian Two handed and Sturgian shock troopers are different in 1.4.1 than they were in the previous patch that you made the video for. A quick reply will do wonders!
I will!! Just waiting a few patches since it's all bound to change again soon. Most of my videos will get a complete re-do the more things change :)
@@italianspartacus Much appreciated! I know I'm asking for alot at this point, but any big changes you think have already occurred in your personal list of what troop's have gone down or up your lists?
You don't know how devastated I was to find out that this game is not on console
My army is always 90-100%"cavelry?".even with just 80-100 men in The party you can wipe armies of hundreds with it, its so OP😂 i usally start to focus on infantry after i have about 130 ish troops.
When u want to complain but just remembered your aserai troop is customized to be near level of imerial equipment
Ah my Battanian boys made it to the list, we’re going up in the world look out!!!
Also, if you garrison bandit troops ready to upgrade, they will upgrade instantly inside your castle
OHHH interesting. Didn't know that
Or you can put them in your companions partys, they will do the same and even provide war worses for free.
You should check some other unit , like the Lake Rat Wrecker that is far better than the Sturgian shock troop.
Minor clans are getting their own video :) because of their relative scarcity to recruit, I didn't include them here because there's no reliable way to get them outside of prisoners
Why didn't you mention the Sturgian Druzhinnik Champion???
It's hands down the best infantry in the game, and it spawns on a horse. I thought 'Oh what crap cavalry', but then I took them off their horse... 100 vs 500 and they killed all 500 cleanly. Then I took a town with the 85 remaining... The town had 600 defenders....
Quite the same, though I prefer my army to be formed mainly by Sturgians! Very capable and tough b*s*a*ds!
Khans guard are disgusting! Put them in mele against archers, omg they destroy with their glaives. Easily could argue they are the strongest overall unit
Great video! Motivates me to try out some troops I hadn't really considered before.
One very minor quibble: You state that Vlandian Squires are easier to find than Imperial Vigla for their respective factional noble lines. As you mentioned earlier in video, village Powerful Landowners are the source of noble-line recruits. The settlement notables are randomized with each new campaign start, so there will be a different distribution, both in numbers and locations, of Powerful Landowners (and therefore noble-line recruits) in each game. So Squires might be easier to find than Vigla in current game, but next playthrough the reverse might be the case. (obviously same general point applies for all the noble lines, not just Squire/Vigla).
Absolute excellent point.. And you bring up a lot of good information there.. I will say though, I've still noticed more powerful land owners in Vlandia than the Empire. I had one save where there was maybe one or two in the empire. It was infuriating hahahah. But i probably shouldn't have used a generalization so I apologize for that!
The Vlandian Banner Knight is actually one of the least armoured heavy cavalry choices in the game, mostly thanks to that shitty peasants hoodie they wear. Druhzinik and Faris are actually better armoured, with the Faris having faster horses too. The fact that couched lance damage isn't all that great either really doesn't help either. The fact that cataphracts have longer lances doesn't help.
They really need a mail coif, some improvements to cavalry ai. As they are, they just aren't great.
how couch lance have no damage ???? You deal 500 damage from couch lance and this is no damage ????
@@Craft97pl That's fine and all, but AI suck at couching lance. So on paper, the Banner Knight is supposed to have the hardest hit but in reality you'll seldom see them pull it off.
Also couch lancing kind of sucks compared to just flat out swinging a slashing polearm from horseback. Wouldn't surprise me if Khan's guard overwhelm them in that field too.
Vladians are so damn good. Easy to get heavy cav, crossbowmen which work great with Armor Does Something mod and can CQC very well with their Pavise shields and decent armor and pretty much best infantry. Love em so much
i love the fursan/farises as an aserai myself
The best along with the heavy armor Mamluks regardless of what anyone else says.
The best ranged and heavy infantry troop is the Imperial Sergant Crossbowman
their stats are wrong atm. they got bow skill higher than crossbow skill