Mount & Blade: Warband

Empress can be achieved with either The Golden Throne or Manifest Destiny Just ensure you choose to play as a female when setting up the character.

*This achievement can be a little glitchy, as you can control every town and village in the game but have a non-surrendering king who will completely disappear from the game until one of their vassals conquer a town/village.
The best way to avoid this is to keep good relations with Lords or capture the kings and lords before taking the last castle/town.

There is no set way to achieve this other than the objective is to defeat all other factions.
This guide focuses on how I did it using the Swadian Knight, however it is possible with troops from any faction.
Note: I did this in the same playthrough that I used for the achievements Kingmaker & Manifest Destiny by making use of the extra save slots.
If you decide to go for Manifest Destiny in the same playthrough, ensure you make a back-up save just before taking the last faction. If you dont make a back-up save you will have to start another playthrough as the game will count that faction you assisted as the Rulers - even if you start your own faction and wipe them out.
On another note: The faction you side with will be a lot harder to defeat using this method - I sided with the Rhodoks and regret it as by the time I turned on them their main castles had a lot of Rhodok Sergeants and Sharpshooters.

A few tips:
- Recruit from at least 2 different factions. When you start a war with the faction, the troops you've recruited that are from that faction will take a heavy morale loss (-50) - leading to them leaving your army overtime. This morale will fix itself once you've either made the faction your facing disband or made peace.
- Before starting a war with another faction, check what troops you have to ensure you dont lose them due to the morale loss.
- Keep an eye on the amount of food you have and try to have a good variety
- Do not rush! start a war and try and take on one lord at a time, keep doing this until you see the majority of them have very small armies, which mainly consist of recruits. This is when you can easily capture castles and towns.
- Do not accept Vassals, over time they will leave other factions and join yours but its best just to leave them waiting. (prevents negative relations)
- Once you capture a Castle/town Recruit all the rescued prisoners and then garrison them in the castle/town.
- If while at war with more than one faction, try and make peace with one of them just to lessen the amount of attacks and so you can fully focus on one faction.
- If a War doesn't go to plan and you die, once you die Do Not Press Continue instead dashboard and quit game. This way you can keep your army and start back at the last auto-save.
- Make use of the save slots - you have 9 available slots (The most recently saved one will be the one the game Autosaves to, so ensure you keep a back-up which is up to date)
- When you defeat a lord and have the ability to capture them - Release them. This will improve your honour and relations with the lord.
- If a faction offers you peace, Accept it - unless they are close to abandoning - This will increase your right to rule.

Morale


Settings


Attributes & Skills



Start
The way I've done this is by having an army roughly 90 - 110 troops consisting of about 60 Swadian Knights and 30 - 50 Vaegir Knights.
When you start the game start in or near Swadia and head to a town. (These are the biggest settlements on the map and the names are in Bold)
Go to the arena and ask about tournaments. They should tell you where the next tournament is and head there (It will always be in a Town)
Keep doing this until you have around 10000 denars.

Once you have the money, time to start building your army:
I recommend mixing Swadian Knights With Vaegir Knights (a very deadly combo)
But its up to you.
It is also worth hiring a companion or two from a tavern in a Town. When they are able to level up place skill points in the skills tagged as "party" to help speed things up.
Below are the Factions and troops available.

Troops & Factions

- Kingdom of Swadia


- Kingdom of Vaegir


- Kingdom of Rhodoks


- Kingdom of Nords


- Khergit Khanate


- Sarranid Sultanate


Once you've decided (I'll use Swadian & Vaegir Knights as examples) start training the recruits all the way to knights via killing Looters/Sea bandits/Mountain bandits. Pick up their loot to sell just for some extra income too.
Once you have roughly 30 knights you are ready to start a war. Keep recruiting and training though!

The order you take on the other Factions is up to you, but if you're following this guide by using knights I recommend this order:
Kingdom of Vaegirs - > Kingdom of Nords -> Kingdom of Rhodoks -> Sarranid Sultanate -> Khergit Khanate -> Kingdom of Swadia
Although we have an order, other factions will worry about your growing power and start a war against you. If this happens feel free to destroy them then and there - especially Swadia.
When you go to war with Swadia make sure you have plenty of Vaegir Knights to prevent your army from downsizing.

To start a war simply attack a lord, once defeated start a siege on a castle to get the other lords to head towards you. Either one at a time or as a group take on these lords to destroy their armies.
They will recruit new troops overtime, but before they have a strong force we will occupy most of their territory.
When you notice that most of the lords heading towards you have around 50 troops each or consist of mainly recruits you can set about taking their castles. They will continue to recruit and come after you but they will be incredibly weak.
Once you capture a castle, recruit the troops that were held prisoner and use them to garrison the castle.
Once you capture your first castle or town you'll be able to create your own faction which will be coloured red.

Make your way through the faction - Once you've captured every single castle and town a faction has as well as destroying their armies the lords will defect to the other factions (including yours) and eventually the king with disband the faction.
1 down 5 to go!

If you want you can recruit a few of the lords that defected to you, although their relation with you will drop if you fail to equally share out fiefs. The positives of having lords is they will help defend your territory and will also attempt to take enemy castles too.
However, if a lord who owns a fief defects they will take the castle/town with them to their new faction. So Beware!

Rinse and repeat with the other factions untill you get to the last faction.

This is where it can be a little glitchy. Before conquering the entire faction - capture their King and destroy all their armies then start capturing the castles.
If you capture all castles before capturing the king it can lead to the king disappearing from the game and they will not disband the faction.
If you have a very bad honour rating and bad relations with lords you can also get into a war of lords defecting and joining either your faction or the last remaning - inducing a sort of stalemate as the other faction wont disband.

Once all factions have disbanded and every Town/Castle/Village on the map is Red, Congratulations you have just achieved

The The Golden Throne achievement in Mount & Blade: Warband worth 273 pointsRule all of Calradia!

and this one if you chose to play as a female:

The Empress achievement in Mount & Blade: Warband worth 365 pointsAs a female character, become queen of all Calradia.