Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

FULL BANNERLORD GUIDE

There’s a lot of things that new people have no idea about which the game doesn’t tell you. I’ll actively update this FAQ list/ guide when I find out more information

Uncommon tips are in the last section, even the veterans might learn something

I’d estimate this game to take 125 hours with a guide, 300 without one

When creating your character I’d recommend the following build:

Empire culture

Urban merchants
Your way with people
In the markets and caravanserais
Rode with the scouts
You treated people well
You organized the travelers to break out

1. Empire culture is excellent regardless of the faction you join, you can conquer and be awarded empire towns for yourself, then not be penalized on loyalty differences. You wouldn’t even need a governor. This causes towns you acquire that were previously imperial to gain prosperity at a huge rate, so while it might not make sense to become the vlandian king as one, do it anyway.

2: There’s also a trick to make the game easier and faster that involves ruling the empire explained at the bottom of the guide. Would only recommend that if you like playing games on the “narrative/ story” difficulty, but if so give yourself empire culture and plan to marry an empire woman.

3: Charm is critical at all stages of the game for speech checks, reducing dowries, relation increases, reducing the price of recruiting enemy clans, and passive influence (late game)

4: By character level 15, I’d recommend to get 3 focus in one hand, 3 focus in bow, 4 focus in riding, 2 focus in athletics, 5 focus in charm, 4 focus in trade. By level 20, do 4-5 focus in engineering.

5: For attribute points by level 20, I’d recommend 7 total in social, 5 total intelligence, 5 total endurance.

6: 7 attribute points and 5 focus in any skill will cap it at 288
8 points 5 focus= 302
9 points 5 focus= 319
10 points 5 focus= 330
So 7 is all YOU need for a final skill
10 is still recommended for family as it increases faster

7: If you have something totally different it’s fine, this is just a suggestion, do not feel obligated to restart, this is just what i’ve found to be immensely helpful from the jump.

8: Sparing ragaros will ensure your little siblings live, executing him causes a RNG chance for a hit squad to go kill the kids.

9: In campaign settings, selecting “reduce clan member death by 100%” and “disable battle death for player hero” will make you and your clan unable to die in battle, but enemy lords have a 2% chance to die, even against each other. Friendly vassals in your kingdom can still die, but those are acceptable losses.
This is also the best way to get the kingslayer achievement

10: Turn OFF perk auto allocation for companions

11: Farm large groups of looters when you can to work on one handed to 100 to get the duelist perk, and bow to 90 to be able to use a noble bow later. Crossbows require being stationary to reload them, absolutely not worth it.

12: Food no longers rots like it did in warband

13: To give individual orders on xbox hold left bumper then tap down on dpad, then scroll over and turn the squares black of the squads that you do NOT want to command, then give orders. Or left bumper then double tap down to order one squad

14: This is useful early to midgame as you can order your infantry and archers to charge, lead your cavalry 150 meters behind the enemy, wait for your infantry to be 10 seconds away from making contact, then have your cavalry charge them in the rear.

15: Early game, going to taverns and recruiting “the wastes” “the golden” “the knowing/ wainwright/ engineer” (one of them not all 3) “the scholar” (from aeserai only) and “the spicevendor” is best. However, its best to give the eldest brother 10 attribute/ 5 focus in steward.
Give the middle sibling the same for medicine (hire an AESERAI scholar until shes 18)
Give the youngest the same for scouting (hire “the wastes” until hes 18), and do engineering yourself as you get lots of points in engineering by manually getting siege weapon kills. Doing it yourself also lets you unlock flaming catapult rounds earlier. 🔥
A great way to level it up yourself is to watch enemy line up at the area where a siege tower will drop its ramp, then snipe with a ballista and get collaterals.
You can also now adjust the range on onagers and trebuchets

16: You give each one one of the 4 roles in the party tab. And the best way to rank up steward is to travel with 30+ units of each food source

17: If a companion you need has no result in the encyclopedia, hiring and firing multiple useless companions will cause others to spawn. Keep going till you get what you want. Their locations will also update every time you enter a village castle or town.

18: The companions have nowhere near 10 attribute points in anything, meaning your family members can get 300 skills points in 10-15 years while the companions could take 50 years to get to 230

19: Be aware that a year in this game is 84 days not 365

20: You cannot directly command your engineer to fire the catapult during a siege, you can direct a squad to use it, but he might just load or assist aiming it.

21: You can bank catapults by pausing and hitting “move to reserve” the second they finish building, might take some damage though

22: SANDBOX DISABLES ACHIEVEMENTS AND STARTING FAMILY

23: FOR THE FIRST 15-20 hours of the game, you should be working on getting 9 caravans, winning 100 tournaments, getting you and your two brothers married but not your sister, getting trade to 125, letting the caravans get you to tier 5 or 6, get the reaper sword, get you and your companions good gear, and recruit tier 4+ cavalry. THEN join vlandia as a vassal and wait for the king to die to take his place through an election.

24: Smithing javelins is also optional but very profitable

25: Building Olive presses at Ostican, Pravend, Galend, and Jaculan is good because those border the ocean, so if they never get sieged, the prosperity grows like crazy, making you more money!
(purchase any workshop there, then change the produced item)

26: Having over 1 million gold in your inventory at the time of the election is the biggest factor in the vote, clan tier is the 2nd biggest factor. Relations are third.

——————-MARRIAGE—————————



M27: DO NOT marry your first sister off to anyone as she will leave the clan for good, and NEVER accept the useless marriage proposal messages that come in for your brothers unless it’s one of the dozen good ones. The offers are almost always from someone trashy. Be aware that clan leaders will only offer the hand of the eldest unmarried woman.

M28: Male children copy their father’s culture and female children copy their mother’s culture as of January 2023

M29: You want to get married ASAP because you want your heir to turn 18 asap to develop his stats, and the wife will permanently join your party.

M30: There’s about a dozen or so women with high stats that are all fixed spawns, and steward is very important to consider.
Silvind-120 steward/ 180 one handed/ vlandian
Liena- 80 steward/ 180 one handed/ vlandian

M31: Sora- 160 steward/ imperial
Ira- 80 steward/ 180 one handed/ imperial
Phaea- 90 steward/ 150 one handed/ imperial

Arwa- 100 steward/ 210 one handed/ aserai

Svana- 90 steward/ 180 one handed/ sturgia

Abagai- 60 steward/ 180 one handed/ khuzait
Yana- 100 steward/ 120 one handed/ khuzait

Corein- 210 one handed/ 0 steward/ battania

Siga (too old to get pregnant 280 one handed)
Nadea
Epipheria

Silvind is overall the best choice imo as she has a bunch of other high skills with 120 steward while the other high steward ladies do not, not to mention vlandia is the strongest faction.

M32: Women rarely get pregnant after 35, almost never after 40. The formal end is 45
There is also a 10% less chance of a woman having a child after each subsequent birth

M33: If you want a new wife: Put a baby in the current one, wait 36 days, save, wait another day, then reload until she dies in childbirth. From pregnancy to birth is fixed at 37 days for all females. Wine, beer, grapes, olives, and jewelry supposedly increase the chance of pregnancy while waiting at ANY fief, owned or not

Same method if you only want boys in order to grow your clan exponentially.

M34: To arrange a super early marriage for your brother, say before even getting to clan tier 4, you can find the clan leader of the bride to be, gift them 5k gold, wait 3 days, give 10k, wait 3 days, give 15k, wait 3 days, give 20k. That should put even a high tier clan leader that refuses to accept items as gifts at 13-15 relation with you, and now he/she will approve the marriage for a reasonably low dowry. This is not necessary, but could put your mind at ease knowing she wont be married off to some loser. Without doing this, the clan leader might deny the marriage with you offering a 150k dowry before tier 4. This is not necessary for you because the speech checks lower the dowry to about 4k

M35: It’s best to at least make the first born of each generation male by reloading in order to shrink the age gap between generations by marrying the first born son as soon as he’s 18. Women can lead your clan, but their husband won’t join your clan unless she’s the leader. You could charge into battle with your grandson!

M36: If a lady you desire already got married early game, you can look in the encyclopedia to see what faction she is in, wait for that faction to be at war, join their enemy as a mercenary by talking to that king and say “my sword is yours for the right price”. Then, find her husband on the map, kill his troops and execute him, then terminate the mercenary contract by leaving through the kingdom tab or by talking to your king. Leaving as a merc will not cost you any relation. Leaving as a vassal costs 20. Then find her clan leader and ask to arrange a marriage. Due to the execution the dowry will likely cost 150k-200k.

—VASSALSHIP/ KINGDOM MANAGEMENT—

VK37: You can swear to caladog as a vassal, take the reaper, the best non-smithed one handed sword in the game, and instantly leave his service with his permission by asking him. Only bad part is you lose 20 relation with every battanian clan, worth it. This MUST be the first kingdom you ever swear to. Working as a mercenary or swearing as a vassal to anyone prior to this nullifies the reward.
Apparently you can also win it as a tournament reward if caladog is an opponent

VK38: This is NOT like warband where you can make your own kingdom at day 50 and be successful. Here, I wouldn’t even do that with 4 million gold.

VK39: Making your own faction is a huge waste of time and money, better to be elected a crown by joining a kingdom and waiting until the current ruler dies of old age, and winning the election by developing a high clan tier, influence, money, relations, and supporters. Then recruit all the enemy lords you can with bribes, and finally promote companions to lords once all enemies are all happy with their current liege. You can change the name and flag of the faction once you take the crown, and you’ll have the loyalty of all those vassals without paying anything.

VK40: You can change the sigil and the color of the kingdom sigil, but not the BACKGROUND color of the flag. It is worth it.

VK41: To put things in perspective, it could cost you between 4 million to 14 million gold to build a faction from the ground up to the strength EQUAL to another starting faction, let alone how many hours it would take, not to mention if you recruit a disloyal vassal, the 1.2 million bribe you paid him to join would be for nothing.

VK42: Marrying a kings daughter is very insignificant in getting his crown and is almost irrelevant. It’s not a separate factor than a relation increase. You could literally achieve the same result by gifting the king’s clan 400 influence.

VK43: Early game it’s best to NOT join anyone as vassal or merc, but instead, run companions with upgraded caravans. Reason being is if you are never part of a war, vassals will never attack the caravans, only bandits will. Next, get the trade 125 perk to get 1 renown a day from each one, and let them carry you almost all the way to tier 5/6, then join as a vassal and become king when the ruler dies. Letting the caravans get you to clan tier 6 could easily get you close to 2 mil gold without joining a kingdom or being a merc.

VK44: DO NOT declare the banner to the king when you join, wait until the 1500 day timer is almost up, then declare the banner to yourself if the king dies.
Waiting that long prevents the annoying “conspiracy quests” popping up all the time, which pull you away from what you are doing to go fight bandits on the other side of the map. A very common complaint from new people.

VK45: There are no inbred monarchies and a crown will not automatically pass to the king’s son.

VK46: For reference- Derthert died of old age for me around summer 13-16
Monchug died on Spring 3
I’m unsure if they’ll die right on their birthday, or they have to “bleed out” from the disease, would love if someone else could test that.
I also don’t know if their birthday’s are fixed dates or not for everyone’s game, but i’d assume so as they are fixed starting rulers.

VK47: Late game, your chosen heir (selected when you are on your deathbed) will inherit all your criteria to be elected king if you die as a ruler meaning clan tier, money, supporters, land, influence, and relations, and said heir will likely be the top candidate winning the election 100-0-0

VK48: Having 1 million gold in your inventory at the time of the election classifies your clan as “very rich”

VK49: While running caravans, you should be working on winning 100 tournaments, saving “wadar hotbloods” (the best horse in the game) for you and your family when you win them from tournaments, and work on getting one handed to 100, you can then get the duelist perk to get 6 renown from a tournament instead of 3. Battanian tournaments are fastest since there is no mounted combat. Selling the prizes along with the caravan money will add up nicely. Farming sea raiders gives decent loot early game as well.

The exploit to get trade very high is at the bottom of the guide

VK50: If you want land early game, wait for a town to rebel, execute the rebel lords and siege the town, building trebuchets and starving the garrison. As long as you do not create a kingdom nobody will attack it. If you join as a vassal with one town, the king will award it to you as you will be the only lord with no fiefs at the start. The second and subsequent towns depend on how much land the other vassals have.

VK51: Vlandia would be the strongest faction and Khuzait the second strongest to join imo. It’s not worth the time attempting to unify the empire. Sturgia definitely does not live up to the glory portrayed by the show “vikings”

VK52: When you join as a vassal, you can use your first 100 influence to propose the MILITARY CORONAE policy, 10% wage increase is not very expensive, and 20% extra influence gains for sieges and battles will add up tremendously if enacted early. Influence is much harder to come by than gold late game. As king once you impose land tax and state monopolies, you get 10% profit from every settlement in the kingdom whether you personally own it or not. This will carry you. As king you can also order your vassals to generally go on offense, defense, or balanaced against each individual enemy faction when you war against them. This helps a ton.

VK53: Other good policies include- Noble retinues, feudal inheritance, castle charters, marshals (if you are not king), MILITARY CORONAE, baliffs, grazing rights, land tax, state monopolies, lawspeakers, royal privilege, magistrates, ROYAL COMMISSIONS, ROYAL GUARD, forgiveness of debts,

VK54: Bad policies- lords privy council, peerage, senate, road tolls, hunting rights, sacred majesty, king’s mercenaries, cantons, DEBASEMENT OF THE CURRENCY, crown duty, war tax, council of commons, citizenship,
tribunes of the people, land grants for veterans, trial by jury

VK55: Enacting royal commissions + marshals, and abolishing lords privy council + senate should make it cost about 6-20 influence per clan to summon each one to your army.

VK56: When the council votes for you to own a TOWN in conquest, manage it and make food production sources such as an orchard top in the queue, pump in some money, turn on irrigation, take OUT most of the garrison troops if the TOWN is in a safe area, then go to the clan tab, go to fiefs, and turn off auto recruitment but keep the wage on infinite. Now your town won’t starve and rebel. Even with no governor. You can also place food in the stash by accessing the keep. However, hover over the net change of loyalty, if it is negative, assign a governor of matching culture, other stats are not important but steward helps, just a garbage companion if said culture is fine. If you dont have one, go to the encyclopedia and filter wanderers by culture, find and hire one. Their location will update whenever you enter a town castle or village.

VK57: During fief votes, You can easily build relation with friendly vassals by choosing the third influence option supporting the candidate that is about to be awarded the fief. It usually gives 45-60 relation, while only losing 5 relation with the other 2 clans

VK58: THERE IS A MAJOR BUG where your vassal clans will desert the kingdom for absolutely no reason if you have 24 or more *ORIGINAL* clans in your kingdom. So do not hire more than 23 of them, and after that promote your companions to lords, as they stay loyal. This bug literally made half my kingdom desert when they all had land, influence, money, and good relation with me. It happens both if i am king or a vassal.

VK59: I would NOT recommend making your own kingdom as your first playthrough, but doing so as your second playthrough with 4-6 mil is effective because you can personally pay tribute for peace by walking up to enemy vassals in person and you can promote companions lords from the jump rather than waiting on a king to die

——————UNCOMMON TIPS——————-

U60: Better troops can be recruited from villages nearest castles, this is most obvious in the khuzait territory as villages bound to castles offer “nobles sons” which can be upgraded into khans’s guards

U61: You can stack arrows by dragging and dropping the second and third stacks, if you hit equip it will only replace the first one. You also cant “equip” banners, drag and drop em into the banner slot.

U62: Turning the reinforcement wave count to 3 in the settings makes the game way easier as it kicks you to the map every 3 waves and you continue with recalculated numbers on the battlefield (DIFFERENT FROM THE MAP NUMBERS) in your favor

U63: Numbers in the actual battle are determined by overall strength (troop quality) in addition to number of troops of both sides. So you could siege an enemy town with 600 tier 3-4 troops against 500 enemies, and the actual battle would have 104 of your giys vs 396 enemies. You would get SLAUGHTERED. The solution would be to bring 250-400 more men than the enemy has to a siege. This also extends your troop strength bar before the attack starts.

U64: If you kill a lot of enemies and take few very casualties, you could formally retreat, attack again, and the next attack have better numbers on the field more in your favor since the sizes would be recalculated. Example 200 v 300 when you are outnumbered, get many kills with few losses, retreat, then the next battle would be 325 vs 175 when you have the advantage.

U65: If you personally fall in battle during a siege with this setting on, you will be forced to “send troops” or quit once the 3 waves end. Sending troops in a siege will cost you tremendous casualties. It is better to sit in a corner during a siege and do nothing so that you can use the 3 wave setting to go right to the keep with your men afterwards and skip fighting 300+ enemy troops entirely, rather than trying to kill 50 guys yourself, dying, and losing 200 men when you hit send troops. So overall, help your men breach the walls, but if you get below half health, hide. You cannot manually do the attack if you are under 20% health!!!!

U66: Two siege tactics:
If the enemy has 300 or less defenders, gallop to a ladder, put it up, have your troops run to it, and then climb it asap and open the gate from the inside, then call your troops to follow you
You can let your guys break down the gate with a ram, wait for them to break the inner gate with swords, then gallop your horse and jump over the enemy with your horse, then carve a path for your men to push through

U67: If you are defending, you can create a formation of only 4 soldiers, make yourself the formation captain, then move that formation right by a siege weapon. You will spawn right by it and can get a massive amount of kills as the enemy approaches as they will still be out in the field

U68: Early game, if you are part of a large army but not the commander of it, you can have all your troops retreat and just fight yourself, other vassals will have their troops fill the gaps. Only advisable if you’re outmatched and broke

U69: In performance mode the battle is capped at 500 units total (enemy and you), horses do not count towards this. Fidelity the cap is 1000. I would recommend performance, especially during sieges, as you take less casualties on a smaller scale

U70: Similar to warband, releasing enemy lords in battle increases the relation of their WHOLE clan with you, will make them more likely to join you if you pass the speech checks, and will lower the bribe required. They will never ask to join you though. They will also not join you if they have even one fief. So knock down a clan to zero fiefs and get relation high by releasing them in battle, then see if they will be a turncoat.

U71: If you are alone and show mercy on a defeated settlement, you will only lose 15 morale. If you do it while commanding an army of other vassals, or even initiating the siege and having them back you, you will a lose a lot of relation with lords who hate you showing mercy as many do. In such cases pillage it, the prosperity can be rebuilt. I’d recommend never devastating.

U72: Helping your vassals complete sieges or battles with over 1000 units really helps turn the tide of a war more than anything. Not because of your manpower, but because time is frozen when you personally do the actual battle. Without you, they will be there for days with both sides taking losses.

U73: You’re allowed to go over the weight limit it just slows you down

U74: Workshops will become very profitable once the town its in hits 4,000 prosperity, it also helps if they border the ocean which means it will be sieged less

U75: Killing a named character by friendly fire has a 2% chance to work

U76: Expand the minibar in the bottom right and hover over party speed, if you have a herding penalty, you have too many horses/ cattle.

U77: You need 7 attribute points to get a skill to 275, otherwise itll be stuck at 274
8 attribute and 5 focus to get something to 302
Therefore lucky 7 is the magic number to get the final skill in everything

U78: Purchasing pugios in imperial towns and smelting them provides MUCH better material for cheap than the time to cost ratio of refining. You can literally skip refining entirely with them

U79: I would recommend NOT to do smithing yourself, instead have your younger brother, your second born child or a nephew do it with 10 endurance and 5 focus. Reason being is your first heir needs riding and scouting to 225 in order to hold prisoners with no chance of escape, and you wont likely be able to afford lots of t6 weapons to smelt for the parts required to get to 275 smithing until the late game. You also don’t want to get it to 275 and die of old age. You can of course make yourself one of the “assistants” that can make 3 pieces of charcoal per click.

U80: It’s only worth spending your time making two handed swords OR JAVELINS and unlocking 2 handed sword parts. Other items arent worth the effort of getting thamaskane steel because only 2 handed swords cap out at 22k sell value. The 22k sell value also requires the perk that increases the sell price, rather than extra smithing endurance

U81: Purchasing stacks of hogs early game, slaughtering them and selling the hides and meat literally doubles the money that you spent on the hogs.

U82: The closest items that look like crowns without mods you can get would be the imperial jeweled helmet and the “crowned helmet” from vlandian tournaments/ marrying silvind. If you have a vlandian daughter she will spawn with one when she turns 18 (might be RNG) You could also get one by waiting for years in a town with a bunch of companions, they will enter tournaments while you wait, if they win you get the prize. You can also spectate a tournament and skip all rounds, they might auto win and give you the prize..
Town governors will also passively win you tournaments and give you the prize provided they have the armor and skills to win.
Update: crowns have been added, you can easily get them when your kids turn 18

U83: When leading an army on the map and following a hostile army running from you, you can dismiss the friendly party with the least troops, they will run up to it and start the fight to hold them in place, then you pull up and swarm them.

U84: Walk around towns to find barber shops to get a haircut.

U85: When trading or selling prisoners, you can drag and drop the entire stack of something over to the left side of the screen rather than move the bar all the way to zero

U86: Clearing bandit hideouts near villages or towns increaes relation and eventually let’s you buy tier 4 troops. This will save you from needing to purchase tons of war mounts, such as steppe hunters or darshi horses, to upgrade them from t3 to t4 yourself.

U87: You can clear out thugs by walking the streets of a town and fighting them, which increases prosperity, but I don’t know if you can permanently remove the gang leader.

U88: You can only starve out the enemy garrison, not the enemy militia. This is why the enemy troop number stabilizes at a certain point when you try it

U89: If one of your towns is starving, you cannot feed them by depositing food in the stash, but you can buy a ton of food somewhere else then sell it to the starving town

U90: The starting rulers of Battania and the Northern empire declare peace very frequently, even when slightly winning because they like to receive a moderate tribute rather than take their land.

U91: The starting rulers of strugia and battania will declare war on a faction much stronger than them. Both are very annoying, and this could apply to more rulers, these are just the ones i know of.

U92: A tall heater shield is the best shield i’ve seen. Worth the 150k if you see it available to buy

U93: You can talk to an arena master to respec the perks of a skill for you or anyone in your clan. I do this with newlywed females to give them the virile perk to have a 30% higher chance of getting pregnant.

U94: Late game you may want to revoke the peerage policy if you feel the need to overrule your council. It is VERY expensive to do so against a low vote, and the price increases as you get more vassals. Your vassals will likely vote to restore the policy later. So if you choose to do that at all, plan on having a limited window of it.

U95: Theoretically if you and your two brothers married Silvind, Liena, and Awra, you could send your brother with high steward, plus those 3 wives as separate party leaders, let them recruit until they max out. Then since calling family to an army is free, you’d have 5 war parties including yourself, and be able to call an army of close to 1000 soldiers for free. The wage would be expensive though, so not a good idea to do until you own half the map and are fighting everyone else at once.

U96: For the endgame, if you want to execute every lord that will not bend the knee, have the heir that you plan to succeed you get 10 attribute and 5 focus in scouting and riding, once they get both to 225, they can get 2 perks that combine to absolutely prevent enemy prisoner lords from being able to escape your party. If your vassals capture an enemy lord in combat, you can purchase that prisoner from your vassal for 5k, and take his head.
This will officially eliminate enemy clans, and eventually officially eliminate the factions like in warband.
I would recommend not doing this until you have at LEAST 70% of the map conquered, AND WHEN YOU NO LONGER INTEND TO RECRUIT ENEMY CLANS, as executions make everyone hate you, and you need at least a few friends to arrange marriages. Executing rebels is always acceptable. This is not necessary for the supreme emperor achievement, that will pop once you get all the land.

U97: It would be optimal to start executing with 70% of the map conquered, yourself as king, and a married son. It would be best to start it with 100% dominion of the map.

U98: There is a perk where you can stack influence from settlements WHILE BEING KINGDOMLESS you can take tons of rebel settlements using this, stack 15k influence, and promote tons of lords immediately

U99: The crackshot achievement only requires a hitmarker, it works with friendly fire both troops and a horse

U100: Shooting bows in first person is tremendously easier

U101: You can couch a lance by charging on a horse at full speed, then hit RB/R2/X. It must say couchable lance in the stats

U102: If your troops are only climbing one ladder instead of two, you can climb it for a couple seconds and jump off, then they will follow

U103: The baby messages are not mandatory to deal with, if you let them pend for 4-6 years, the game will automatically choose some options for them once that child gets to the next year that causes a message

U104: Be aware that retiring characters on the mountain does NOT nullify their marriages

U105: You can give a governor certain perks in order to make it 95% harder for prisoners to escape from the dungeon that he/she governs, you could then dump enemy lords there instead if executing them. I’ll add the list of perks later, but “mounted patrols” does not count.

U106: KILLING A KING with friendly fire on the battlefield has a 2% chance to work, but if your king gets captured, follow the enemy army to a TOWN (not a castle) and confirm they dumped him in jail, sneak in with the two faced perk at 50 rougery, and “attempt” to bust him out of jail. Then either kill him by friendly fire with a arrow or throwable, or have a guard kill him with a BLADED weapon. He will then instantly die in battle 100% guaranteed if you have hero death on. If a guard hits him with a mace or blunt weapon he will go unconscious.
This apparently does not work at clan tier 6 as you are too famous to wear a disguise.

U107: Very helpful perks late game:
Steward 100- paid in promise- discarded armors can be donated to your troops for xp
Steward 125- giving hands- discarded weapons can be donated to your troops for xp
Medicine 125- siege medic- losses to siege bombardment has a 50% chance of getting wounded instead of killed
Engineering 175- camp building- during sieging, army loses 50% less cohesion
Engineering 225- improved tools- camp building is 50% faster
Leadership 175- inspiring leader- 20% less influence needed to call a party to your army
Leadership 100- loyalty and honor- recruit non bandit prisoners faster VERY IMPORTANT
Leadership 200- leader by example- recruit melee prisoners faster
Charm 275- 1 influence a day for every 5 skill points over 250
Charm 200- natural leader- characters in other factions require -1 persuasion successes
Tactics 150- call to arms- parties move faster to your army and require 15% less influence to be called

U108: Late game a majority of my army consisted of tier 6 cavalry that i took as prisoners.
Aserai vanguard faris
Khuzait Khan’s guard
Strugian druzhinik champion
Imperial elite cataphract
Vlandian banner knight

U109: I would also recommend hoarding a bunch of the lower tier versions of troops that can be upgraded into khans guards in your garrisons of 1 city that matches your culture that you want to keep for the whole game

U110: Look in the encyclopedia to find the the tier 4 and 5 versions of these units and take those prisoner as well. The tier 3 version will require a war mount to upgrade to tier 4, so it’s easier to avoid that.

U111: You cannot officially unify the empire without doing the banner quest. You could bribe plenty of the ones with no land to join you, but others will eventually say “i am happy with my current liege” even when nobody in the kingdom has a fief.
To officially have every imperial clan in one kingdom- you could join a non imperial kingdom, declare the banner to that king and eliminate two empires, have them merge into one, leave your non imperial faction, join the unified empire, then eventually become emperor once the old one dies. Lucon very commonly lives past 80, so do NOT have the northern empire be the kingdom that absorbs the other two. This is probably the easiest and cheapest way to conquer the map as you’ll have more than double the strength of vlandia. It would be best to eliminate the northern empire first, do not execute any lords and release them all in battle to gain relations.

You could also declare the banner to monchug, the khuzait ruler, as a mercanary, then when you leave, there will be no relation loss

U112: If you are on an old gen console, disable the autosave to prevent it crashing when the autosave kicks in upon returning to the map, as this can corrupt ALL your files. Less likely on new gen, but better safe than sorry

U113: If you are making your own kingdom and don’t know why “clan indenpendence” is not checked off on the quest, talk to both the woman at epicroeta and the guy at marnuth, agree with BOTH of them to destroy and save the empire, then only go forward with one

———-TRADE BUFF——————-——

VIDEO GUIDE ON YOUTUBE: Flesson19 - trade 300

This will upgrade trade significantly, but its hard to push it past the learning limit wall without 5 focus points.

You can do this with less than the amount that I will tell you, but to be safe, and quickly profitable, I would advise copying my ratios.

To my knowledge the town with the least iron on average at any given time is Sanala in the Aserai territory, go there with at LEAST upwards of 50k gold, 200 iron ingots, and 75 steel ingots, visit the town, then back out so you are DIRECTLY at the entrance to the town.

Wait for a caravan (does not matter from which faction) hit X to slowly make the caravan get next to you so that you can talk to it without moving AN INCH and purchase all iron ore, crude iron, wrought iron, iron ingots and steel ingots from both the caravan AND the town. It is okay if the town has a ton of iron weapons or silver ore

Talk to the caravan and purchase EVERYTHING he has, he should have at least 33 sumpter horses, as he did every time for me, which will increase your carrying cap. The point of this is to raise the amount of gold he has to barter to get you more percentage of the fat cat achievement in one go. Give him one piece of grain in case you exit the trade menu as you can't talk to him if he has no items.

Now sell him as many iron ingots as he can buy without his money going into the negative. He should have a bit of gold left, but not enough to afford one ingot. Then back out.

Trade at the town and sell it ALL 75 steel ingots. This presence now makes iron considered "common" in the area

Go back to the caravan and buy back all the iron ingots, they will now be locked at a low price and will not increase as you slide the bar like most items do.

Go back to the town and purchase all the steel back, don't forget this.

Repeat with the next caravan, when you sell the iron ingots to the next caravan, THIS is the point were you'll get dozens of trade points each time. Remember to always purchase all iron from each caravan AND the town as running this transaction with either of them holding one piece of iron ore will mess up your trade margins considerably.

So I just unlocked this tonight. Absolutely no disrespect to the other solution, the dude has clearly put in a lot of time and effort but personally I found it overcomplicated and wasn’t very useful to me. I didn’t spend loads of time messing around with builds and my sim here is to provide an alternative, concise guide that tries to get you the achievement in the fastest, legitimate way possible without having to worry about ultra specific builds and point allocation.

So early game pick your faction (I went for Vlandia as I like their troops and they have the strongest starting position on the map) and start to slowly build your party capacity by attacking gangs of looters/raiders. Make sure to loot their gear and sell it all. This is how I made the bulk of my money early game as well as tournaments. Tournaments give valuable gear which can be sold sometimes for large sums of money. Build your clan level via these two methods until you can be considered for vassalage (think it’s level 2). This is all renown linked which can only really be earned by winning battles and tournaments early game. Look out for the park that gives you double renown for winning tournaments as this will help early game.

Once you join a faction they will likely give you a number of newly conquered fiefs. This will allow you to start ti build passive income. Make sure you limit your garrison expenses in the clan menu so that your expenses don’t overtake your inflow. Once you have a decent passive income coming in, you can concentrate on further building your party size and strength.

The only perks that are essential in my view are as follows:
- social - you need to max this skill for recruiting lords late game. It will take you forever to win if you don’t recruit lords of other factions into your own.
- steward - you need the perks from this tree that grant you the ability to donate weapons and armour for troop exp. This will help you level units up to maximum quickly and keep your party as an elite force.
- look for the perk that makes it harder for captured lords to escape. Late game you will be locking up a lot of lords and you do not want them escaping and raising armies again in minutes.

That’s it, the rest, do what you want. Medicine and leadership are good for reducing losses and increasing party size, tactics for auto resolve odds late game. Personally I had a bit of everything with focus on what I have mentioned above.

Do not bother with the campaign. It makes the game much much harder and it took me a looong time to defeat the empire which I really could have done without tbh. It nearly broke my game. Don’t make that mistake.

Ok so you have a few fiefs, you have income coming in, your party is growing in size and strength. Now comes the endless warring and expansion.

Once you have a lot of influence (thousands) start forming armies. Make sure to not use all lords as you will want to rotate to them out as they deplete. If you use around half, fight with them, wait until they have lost most of their troops then dismiss them and replace them with fresh parties this will keep your army large and fresh. I need to stress you will need a lot of influence here so make sure you are ready before you embark on this path.

Start aggressively taking fiefs nearest to your one. Preferably focus on one faction and weaken them one at a time. The enemy will throw seemingly endless armies at you, but once you destroy them repeatedly they will have armies of low tier troops easily beaten with your elite forces. Replenish your party with rescued troops and prisoners as you go. You will get to a point where you have taken a sizeable portion of the map and this is where it gets tedious. All factions will constantly declare war on you when you get too big so be prepared for multiple front conflicts. Focus on one faction at a time and try and eliminate them as fast as possible. Do not use auto resolve unless you have overwhelming odds.

Control your men in battle wisely. Protect your archers and flank using cavalry. Don’t just charge all troops and watch the chaos. I have some videos on YouTube if you need tips on tactics. The khuzaits gave me the hardest time due to their horse archers. Nightmare to deal with. Take out their horse archer ls with your mounted troops as soon as possible and this weakens them substantially.

Towns and castles recently taken have small garrisons and Will be targetted and taken quickly by the enemy. You will spend a lot of time running around seeing enemies off. This is unavoidable. It’s a long game of attrition. It will make you want to quit at some point, but persevere and you will slowly grind them down.

Do not random lords at this stage ad they will instantly start recruiting and be fighting you or taking your holdings in no time. Keep them locked up. Recruit them if you can, you should have vast sums by this stage will all the looting and passive income from fiefs.

Keep going and eventually you will take the map fief by fief. Try to stay focussed, don’t despair.

Iv probably forgotten some stuff. I will likely add to this. Feel free to interact in the comments all views are welcome. If you don’t like the solution please tell me why so I can improve it. Thank you and good luck