Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

The method in the other guide is faster obviously, however since it’s a glitch and might be patched I wanted to share how the achievement is supposed to register.

First off, don’t let anyone tell you can’t be successful by making your own kingdom. I got this achievement on day 727 with 21 clans under my rule.

Once you get the quest to Weaken The Empire, it says to get them down to less than 4 settlements. I took time here and there to do the conspiracy missions and they were only at 1300/2000, but in hindsight I shouldn’t have wasted time because regardless the conspiracy will be successful and the empire unites. Aside from the bar reaching 2000, the conspiracy finishes these 2 ways: 1) the empire has less than 4 settlements in total 2) 2 empire factions have NO fiefs. - That’s what happened to me and I didn’t expect it. The northern and western empire had no fiefs but the southern still had 6 settlements (3 towns and 3 castles) and the conspiracy completed and all 3 declared war on me. I had previously never been at war with the Southern Empire. Rhagea never declared war on me, possibly because I had close to 100 relations. Same with Caladog of the Battanians, and Unqid of the Aserai.

Anyway, at this point you will see a War Progress bar with each imperial faction that goes from -100 to 100. All 3 kingdoms were roughly in the -50 range to start. It says you can raise it by defeating them in battle or taking their settlements. Within a matter of days my clans and my party beat down enough Western Empire parties/armies that the bar went to 100 and the animation/cutscene pops up saying the Western Empire is eliminated. That’s when the achievement popped! Even though I still had to finish off the northern empire bar, and even though the Southern still had 6 settlements. So in other words only 1 empire faction had to be completely eliminated for this achievement.

It also said at that point the western empire clans would disperse to other kingdoms (3 of them I had already recruited to my kingdom). It appears they all joined the southern and northern empire. I didn’t notice any imperial clans with other kingdoms. Garios and his Comnos clan remained as the only remnants of the Western empire.

*Edit 1: Garios joined the southern kingdom as a vassal and I was able to recruit him to my kingdom after capturing him. In Warband the faction leaders would completely leave after their kingdom was destroyed so it’s nice they stick around in Bannerlord.

*Edit 2: After eliminating all 3 imperial factions, the remainder of the imperial clans (all under the Southern Empire) ALL joined the Khuzaits (not sure if that’s random or not). At this point you can recruit some of the existing imperial factions if you want, including the previous imperial leader clans.

I stumbled across a glitch/backdoor to this achievement that allowed me to get the achievement MUCH earlier than expected.

After fighting for thr Battanians for awhile, I got bored with them and decided I wanted to quit and join the Aserai.

Upon clicking "Leave Kingdom" the Freedom! achievement immediately unlocked to my surprise.

Conditions that may or may not be required for this to work:

- Dragon Banner assembled
- Side chosen (in my case, the Battanians for Barbarians)
- Fiefs gained (I had a town and two castles)
- Conspiracy side missions failed (I just ignored all the missions because they were annoying)
- I was married and had a child who was also married (doubt this matters)

It's easy enough for you to test. Just save your game. Then go to the Kingdom tab and select "leave kingdom." You can see if you get the achievement, then reload your previous save.

Update: I just tested this with choosing Empire, immediately after joining them, and it did not work. So I'm guessing first failing the conspiracy and/or having fiefs is necessary for this glitch to happen.

(Worked as of patch 1.0.1.4393)