I guess I should’ve been more specific. Golden Horde = Mongol Horde/armies under the great Khans.
The Khergit in the game are modeled after the Mongols. Cavalry forces that always stay mobile and often snipe from range. You can put together such a force in the game by recruiting only Khergit cav, but there are better factions for opening an unstoppable can of whoop-ass. Khergit are mainly annoying in the game.
SOLD. That’s all I needed to know, thanks.
OK, but don’t come crying to me when you face your Ain Jalut at the hands of the faction modeled after the Mamluks. :)
Time and again I’ve managed to stay clear from M&B Warband, I also got in at the original installment’s beta for under $10, and I know it’s not good for my health.
But now you guys bring up this deal, and it’s like being in the beta all over again (only it’s not, and has multiplayer), and my resistance is rendered futile.
Horse Archer is a relatively decent way to learn how to play. Often you’ll just be kiting a bunch of angry Tutons, trying to fire your last few arrows into their helmets. Lots of fun :D
(just keep a great axe on backup)
Thanks for all the information, everyone. I have a few more questions:
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I love this game too much. Is there any reason to get and play the original or is Warband essentially an upgrade?
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The Khergits are the most annoying enemies ever. Can you wipe out an entire faction? Or at least force them to stop riding all over the freaking battle map?
I’ve never purged an entire faction from the map, but I can say that Warband is essentially an upgrade and renders vanilla M&B obsolete.
Yeah, you shan’t be missing out by not playing the original M&B, rest assured. Think of Warband as simply a newer version release.
I just wish the multiplayer were cooperative multiplayer. I guess the unique combat engine would give some life to deathmatchy sorts of gameplay, but that’s not what appeals to me about the idea of playing Mount & Blade with another person.
Being able to share a game world with someone, kinda like Diablo did, would be REALLY sweet!
I don’t think original M&B is necessary, but I find it easier to hit things with my sword in the original. That’s kind of a small thing to pay for, though. :)
You can absolutely wipe the Khergits out. You’ll probably have to do it yourself, as the AI is terrible at strategic warfare (taking castles and towns) and, even if you’re the marshal, often won’t sit around at sieges long enough to support you.
The way to beat the Khergits in field battles, though, is to have an all-infantry army. Nords work best, in my experience, as they can throw axes at the few Khergits who won’t charge at them… I’ve had lots of success against Khergits by telling my infantry to hold in one place and press the “Stand Closer” button several times so they get densely packed. The coursers Khergits ride don’t punch through crowds of infantry well and once their horses are dead (which will be fairly quick with all those axes slashing at them) they’re essentially archers and go down quickly. You can’t change the way Khergits fight, but you can neutralize their strengths. :)
If you already have an all cavalry force, you can just tell them dismount at the start and treat them as infantry. I don’t really recommend getting off your horse personally, but if you don’t mind fighting on foot you could do that. Just stay out of the way of anybody you don’t want to fight and lead them back to your men and everything will work out fine.
::edit:: Also, I find getting Trainer up to 4 really makes a difference in getting your troops to advance (move up the troop-type tree) quicker.
Warband is more of M&B + major patch + DLC rather than a new game in it’s own right (though I have the same issue with swordplay - at least from horseback - as Orangist). No need to play the original.
I played one game where the Nords were reduced to a few roaming lords, having lost all of their towns and castles, so yes you can definitely wipe out a faction. You will have to hunt down the last lords though.
Playing a horse archer character, roaming around fighting Desert and Steppe bandits with my merry band of horse archers (and my own creation, the Sarranid light cavalry) is about as much fun I know how to have. I cannot recommend the Sarranid horse enough as a horse archer … horse.
I would also strongly advise against getting off your horse in combat, unless you’re pretty damn good at melee.
I don’t understand why they don’t put the jousting events in lists for the tourneys. I really dislike the way the last 1 v 1 always seems to turn into an endless circle chase until the AI eventually gets stuck on a wall.
Not sure if anybody here is too interested in multiplayer, but just some news to look out for. There is a mod that is gaining some popularity as it is being developed, called Strategus. It basically works with an existing mod, cRPG, but adds an overland browser / map game to drive the battles forward.
Starting with what cRPG is… crpg lets you level up a character online. The standard game mode of cRPG is battle, two sides, one life until the round is over. As people get killed around you and you make kills, you get XP and Gold. You can then go to a webpage (which updates at the end of each < 4 minute round) and spend the gold on gear, and assign points as you level up.
The climb when you are new is pretty horrible, but they are working on fixing that. The first 10 levels can fly by in an afternoon though, and soon enough you can at least damage players, but there are a lot of high level guys in plate armor you can’t hurt too much to start. It does offer a lot of variety and challenge and has an overall purpose to playing, which is nice.
So the reason cRPG has picked up steam is the Strategus extension to cRPG. I haven’t seen the interface for it yet, but essentially it is the single player game map in the browser. You have a location on the map, it takes time to move from area to area. Factions/players own towns and gain income from the towns and can recruit troops from towns.
When two armies end up in a fight a new battle is created. I’m not sure how you assign the time, but there is about a 24 hour period to schedule the game.
The battle that will play out is a team deathmatch. The number of total tickets/lives is the same as your Strategus troop strength. So if I have an army of 1000 attacking an army of 500, I will have 1000 tickets to work with, and they will have 500 in the fight.
The gear that is used for the fight is purchased in game. So for example they might by 50 longswords, 100 arrow stacks, 30 bows, 50 pikes, 30 leather armors for their army. In addition there are some special gear pieces like siege ladders and the like.
So from a player perspective, every character page in cRPG will see that a battle is happening between two factions at a particular time. If you are not part of the faction or near the fighting in the strategus game, you can still apply to be a mercinary to actually play out the fight on a particular side. You can apply with a certain gold cost to fight for one side or the other and may or may not be accepted by the commander.
So come fight time, the game server will flip over to Strategus mode, you join, and are placed on a faction side depending where you signed up. From here you can select gear from the equipment pool to spawn with. When you die, you can pick gear again from the pool of remaining gear so long as there is another ticket to be used for that life.
The two armies will then fight until one side runs out of tickets.
So this is up and running right now with some hickups. I’m not in the beta of it yet, and things are still being ironed out and worked on, but there is a lot of interest in this mod. Right now it is mostly European based servers, but there is one north american cRPG server and they are working on getting a NA Strategus server.
So for anybody that didn’t find the Native multiplayer to their liking, might want to start taking a look into strategus. There is a forum for it on the taleworld forums where you can find more info (released mods—>crpg + strategus).
Just the other day someone finally got their hands on a major town and there was a good 5000 ticket vs 2000 ticket battle with almost 160 players in the server (though there were lots of lag complains). I really think this mod will take off and is worth following as it continues its development.
That sounds very promising, reapy. I’ll give it a try when I revive my Warband game.
I’m starting to think that when I eventually jump back into the game again, I’ll re-roll and start over as a male. I enjoyed the idea of playing a female warlord, but I probably started advancing socially far too late in my game and I’m facing a long grind in that department now, which is distracting and discouraging since that’s currently my main goal. I think I may be the only Qt3 member to have seriously tried playing a female character in Mount and Blade.
The Problem I see with crpg is the pyramid shaped structure of the people playing. There are like 10% of top tier players with many hours spent farming, a middle stage of players with some gear, and lots of fodder.
cRPG starts you out as a peasant, without a shield. If you don’t outright get sniped by someone you will die as soon as you enter melee.
The official tip is “stay with an advanced players and hope you are not worth the enemy’s time”. In the actual game though those top tier players will go to great lengths to kill as many peasants as possible, as wading through itemless new players is the closest you get to singleplayer ownage.
Killing peasants also burns tickets as much as killing a vet does, I guess.
The Strategus part seems like a major milestone, hope TaleWorlds eventually gets around to integrating that oficially so any mod could theoretically use it.
As for the farming of cRPG, thanks but no, thanks. Mount&Blade is for me a game about skill, I love how in a multiplayer everyone is just about as fragile to a good couple blows. The standard system of using gold to buy better equipment while you’re pouring the kills is as good as it gets, uber stats are kind of a stretch.