I love the extra difficulty, higher troop costs etc but the swing speed for me is just too high to start with! I like being a slow swinger at the start then building up to faster swings. BUT everytime I change the combat speed to normal in the options, it reverts back to 'Hard Mode is setting the combat speed to maximum'. Having Trouble Obtaining Troops? This Shall be your Reference Guide Table of Contents IntroductionTraining Camp Quests level 5+Accolade Troop Coin Merchant (level 10+)Climax Difficulty Troops (Lv 12+)Subjugation TroopsExtreme Difficulty! Lv 30 TroopsInvasion Missions Level 30 TroopsHeroic Troop attending 28daysPvP Coliseum (Duels – 3v3 – 8v8) Level 24+Exclusive Content (Purchaseables. Doubt you could get over 200 that easily. Without high leadership it will be hard to have high morale troops. You can change these with tweakMB and some other things so that you get a higher base number of troops, need less rep for 1 troop, you can easily change so that you can have 15 in leadership and have high charisma. You must remember that the hard mods, like Perisno and Pendor are balanced for 135% difficulty. With their level 50+ units, you HAVE to use tactics. But if you make your armored units effectively invulnerable, Pendor and Perisno become a cakewalk, even more than Native and Gekokujo, where the is no super heavy armor. Howler’s Troop (3 Skill Points) – Loose arrows simultaneously at two locked targets. Howler’s Troop II (3 Skill Points) – Loose arrows simultaneously at three locked targets. (Locked Skills to be updated) We’ll keep this post updated before Shadow of the Tomb Raider‘s release on 14th of September, 2018. There are still those skills.

There are a lot of obscure mechanics in Warband that a very large fraction of the playerbase is unaware of. Even veterans of this game do not necessarily know how everything works. This guide attempts to bring some of these obscure mechanics to light. I haven't proofread anything yet, but hopefully you can learn something.

Introduction

Even after 1000 hours, I am still learning new things about this game. Is that a good thing? If you asked me, probably not. There are so many obscure mechanics -- some of which are extremely important, mind you -- that the game doesn't explain clearly, and so a huge portion of the playerbase may not even know about most of these things. Because of this, I figured I should write a guide that explains them.
Difficulty Settings - Campaign AI and Combat AI
All of the difficulty settings are pretty self-explanatory, save for the AI settings.
Campaign AI affects many things:
In format:
Poor / Average / Good (i.e the values on respective difficulties would be 6/4/2)
Economy:
Player tax inefficiency becomes more severe as campaign AI difficulty increases. The player can hold 6/4/2 'core' fiefs, i.e fiefs that do not suffer from tax inefficiency. Each 'non-core' fief increases tax inefficiency by 3%/4%/5%.
Lord Armies:
Overall, on good campaign AI, and to some extent average, enemy kingdoms will be significantly more powerful and it becomes essential to take lords prisoner.
Campaign AI mainly determines how fast an AI Lord can recruit troops. In code, this is technically done by determining the cost of recruitment. On Good Campaign AI, a lord will be able to completely recover from defeat after just a week or so. Whereas on poor campaign AI, you can easily get away with never taking a single lord prisoner throughout your entire game, on good campaign AI, I would recommend that you take enemy lords prisoner -- even upstanding and good-natured ones -- to prevent a constant stream of enemies.
Campaign AI also determines a Lord's wealth (I think? Or it might just be a side effect of drastically lower recruitment costs) and their army's XP rate -- both of these primarily determine their army's troop quality.
It is a common myth that max AI lord party size is determined by campaign AI difficulty. In fact, it is determined by the 'ideal party size' variable, which is determined by the player's level. In other words, max AI lord party size is the same across all difficulties and scales with the player's level. Practically speaking, though, Lord armies will generally tend to be bigger on good campaign AI because Lords can reach their max party sizes faster because of their outrageously buffed recruitment speed. Additionally, these death stacks will have far more room to upgrade their troops.
Behavior:
Campaign AI determines how biased lords are against the player in several ways. On Good campaign AI, lords will be less willing to follow a player marshal, less likely to join the player's kingdom, more likely to declare war on a player kingdom, and (I think) more likely to attack the player's fiefs.
TL;DR, don't play on Good Campaign AI unless you want a challenge, because the AI cheats a lot. On good campaign AI, a lord will essentially be able to spawn an army out of thin air, and in the late game, it wouldn't be unusual to see Harlaus walking around with nearly 100 men-at-arms.
Combat AI
But what does combat AI do? It turns out that combat AI is a lot more simple to explain and a lot less cheaty than campaign AI.
On poor combat AI, the AI is stupid. They will delay their swings, giving you an opening to attack them. They will not feint and they are generally poor at blocking. Their sole tactic on the battlefield is bum rushing into your shield wall. I would not recommend playing on this difficulty. I played on poor combat AI for my first 800 hours, and it resulted in some very bad habits which I'm still trying to break. You will not get that much better at combat playing on this setting since everyone, even elite troops, are pretty much punching bags. This is probably the most noob setting to turn down, even worse than the damage settings IMO.
Average combat AI is a balance, I'd recommend it for new players.
On good combat AI, the AI will have no delay on their swings, will feint extremely frequently (several times before an attack), and is very good at blocking. This allows them to operate to the full extent of their stats, and everyone will fight as if their lives depended on it. It will be a challenge to take down even a single elite troop if your weapon proficiency is not good.

AI Behavior

How do lords interact with the player?
Lords have personalities. These personalities are: Upstanding, Good-natured, Martial, Calculating, Pitiless, Quarrelsome, and Debauched.
The better their personality, the more loyal they are as vassals, but the harder it is to convince them to join your kingdom. Ideally, you want all of your vassals to be either Upstanding, Good-natured, or Martial.
Their choice of dialogue depends on their personality, so once you memorize the different dialogue it becomes easy to know their personality.
Interestingly, AI Kings will not allow you to become their vassals under normal conditions if you have high right-to-rule -- they consider you a potential rival/threat to their realm's stability. You can still become their vassal if you take land first before asking.
AI Lords that dislike you will do everything in their power to attack your villages. The only exception is the Good-natured lord, which will never loot any village, ever, including villages owned by other AI lords.
If a sadistic (evil/debauched) lord dislikes you (-20 relations or less), they will hire assassins that attack you in taverns. They function exactly like a Belligerent Drunk does except they attack you without notice and you do not have to look at them for them to attack you.
Which skills can AI Lords use?
If you plan on making a companion into a lord (which you can do if you ask them 'Would you be interested in holding a fief?' when you have your own kingdom set up), you might want to invest into these for them. I highly recommend checking the wiki first, however, because companions have personalities as well. And you will lose a chunk of relations with every lord in the game if you make a commoner companion into a noble.
AI Lords use 4 skills:

• Pathfinding
• Trainer
• Tactics (helps them in autoresolve)
• Leadership

How are autocalc battles, both between you and an AI and AIs versus other AIs, calculated?

1. Numbers.
2. The levels of their troops.
3. Level of the Tactics skill.

Equipment and so on has no role in autocalc. From what I understand, all that matters are those three.
Do AI Lords have wealth?
The answer is yes. They use their wealth for recruitment (and possibly upgrading). Unlike the player, they have to manually collect money from their fiefs. This is why you'll see them sitting outside of their villages. It's also why AI Lords become poor if they have too many fiefs -- because they don't have the time to travel around the map to collect taxes. For this reason it is best to arrange your vassals in a way where they only have a few fiefs and they are all right next to each other.
An AI lord's village will lose wealth if you loot it, preventing them from collecting taxes. But that barely does anything compared to just defeating them in battle and forcing them to rebuild their army. A fief's wealth cannot go below 0.
The AI lord's economy functions completely differently from the player's economy. AI lords cannot have enterprises. As far as I know, their only source of income is their fiefs (They may, but I am not certain if this is true, get some money from looting villages).
AI Lords lose wealth by recruiting troops, and possibly from upgrading them.
Do Lords have to pay upkeep?
The answer is yes. Lords pay wages to troops based on this formula: ((Troop_level^2)+50)/30. They do not have to pay extra money for cavalry or archers. If they cannot afford their troops, their troops will either get disbanded by the lord or desert from the lord's party.
Which troops desert from a lord's party is random. The lords disband low-level troops and non-faction troops first.
You may have noticed the small parties of fiefless lords. They aren't making money, so how can they have armies? The answer is that Lords don't only have a maximum party size, they also have a minimum party size. If they are below this, they will gradually get troops via free recruitment while sitting in a walled fief until they have a few dozen troops, say 30-50 or so. However, because they have no money, they will not be able to upgrade their troops or recruit any more above that minimum. And when they do get money, they will have to pay for all of their troops' wages, including the ones they got for free.
Hypothetically, an AI lord's army can be of an infinite size, because they can go over their max/ideal party size by rescuing prisoners. However they will eventually start struggling with desertion or they will have to disband the prisoners.
As far as I know, AI lords do not have any system of debt. Their fiefs definitely don't.
What is certain, though, is that Lords have to pay for recruitment above the minimum party size. How much this costs depends on Campaign AI difficulty. This is why on Good Campaign AI, a Lord can spawn an army out of thin air.
If all your lord has is castles then he won't have any wealth to build up his army since the wealth of castles goes towards maintaining their garrisons. Villages might not be good for the player but they are really good for the AI. A good setup for an average Lord is 1 castle and 1 village. Castles mainly help them raise their maximum party size, +40 each, rather than providing wealth. It should also be noted that a castle's wealth is based on its village's wealth -- this also applies for when the player owns the castle.
The interesting thing is that AI Lords do not pay for their garrisons. Instead, an AI Lord's fief's strength is determined by the fief's Prosperity. Coupled with the fact that AI Lords do not suffer from tax inefficiency, a lord could theoretically have every fief in the game and each garrison would be fully stocked. Actions that lower the Prosperity of a town, such as destroying caravans, will, in the long-term, result in a weaker garrison, but this is not practical knowledge to the player. It does generally mean, however, that places that are bandit-infested, have been sieged countless times, and so on should have weaker garrisons, at least if the town's situation remains consistent throughout the entire game.
Do Lord armies use food and morale?
No, they don't use either.
How do AI Lords manage their armies and garrisons?
As stated before, AI Lords do not pay to reinforce their garrisons.
AI lords' troops need XP to be upgraded. An AI lord will add 30% of (Trainer+2)*500 xp/every 2 days. Lords have trainer skill between 2-7, on average this is around 3 or 4. So the average lord adds ~375-450 xp per day. Each point of trainer is worth 75 xp/day. This is rather meager -- a Player Character with 10 in trainer adds 80 xp to each unit. I don't know for certain if it costs an AI lord money to upgrade a troop, but I highly suspect and assume that it does.
How is a Lord's troop quality determined?
The short answer is that an AI Lord's number of elite troops depends on his wealth (an AI Lord requires wealth to upgrade). Again, because higher Campaign AI will reduce recruitment cost, Lords will have more money as a side effect (saving money is gaining money in this case) and they will have more money to upgrade troops with.

Skills, Stats, and Proficiencies

Without tweaks or cheats, the attribute cap is 63, the skill cap is 10, and the proficiency cap is 699.
I'll get right to the most important tip: the +4 bonus player gets for leveling party skills doesn't require a companion to have the skill!
If you have 10 pathfinding, you will get the 10(+4) even if not a single companion in your party has a point of pathfinding. You can test this by starting a new game, importing a character with 10 in every skill. You will notice that you have +4 in every party skill despite no companions being in your party. This means that if you are playing a brainy character, you will only need a couple of INT companions so that you can get them to 10 in the party skills that you don't plan on leveling.
If you need advice on leveling companions, I would suggest two things: Bandit camp quests and hunting down bandits with just your companions in your party.
Approximately 1/5th of strength is added to your damage output. This means that every 5 points of strength will increase your damage by about 1.
Every point of agility gives you an increase in movement speed approximately equal to 1/4 or 1/5ths of a point of athletics.
Every point of agility gives you 0.5%+ attack speed.
Persuasion increases the chance of routed enemies surrendering, meaning they become prisoners in your party without you having to fight them.
Every 100 points of proficiency increases attack speed by about 15%. Additionally, with melee weapons, every 100 points of proficiency increases damage by 5%.

Controls

Campaign Map
Hold down CTRL+SPACE while moving on the campaign map to speed up game time.
CTRL+Left click on items to buy and sell quickly at merchants.
Battles
If you attack in the direction you're being attacked right as soon as you're about to get hit, you'll parry the strike. This is known as the 'chamber block'.
Press E to kick. Pretty useless, usually.
Pressing Backspace in a battle will give you a minimap and allow you to control your troops by clicking on the minimap.
You can also hold down F1 in a battle and you'll be able to drag around a rallying point, which allows you to control your troops. You can make separate rallying points for each group.
Certain weapons, especially throwing weapons, have multiple attack types/styles. X swaps between them. Try it with a throwing axe or jarid.

Tips and Tricks

Keeping horses in your inventory will reduce the party speed penalty for carrying heavy things. However, if you carry too many, it will just slow you down and take up needed inventory space. I personally prefer 3 horses.
If someone in your party has high First Aid, you can heal lame horses by keeping them in your inventory. This is important because there is a chance of your horse dying if it gets downed in combat while lame. Unfortunately, you will not recover positive modifiers (such as Spirited) after healing your horse.
Similarly, your shield can get damaged if it breaks too many times. I believe that it can break completely as well if it keeps breaking after getting damaged. Unlike horses, you cannot repair/heal shields.
The recruitment option for a village is reset by a relations change. What you can do is recruit, then take a quest and recruit again, then fail the quest and recruit again, then take another quest and recruit again, then fail that quest and recruit again... You can easily get 50+ recruits from a single village this way. Most of your companions will complain about failing a quest, but unless they are already extremely unhappy, they won't leave.
Additionally, if a village has low prosperity, you can ask the villagers 'How is life here?' and one might ask you for a donation of 300 denars in exchange for 1 relation point with the village. While this does not appear to be a meaningful amount, as I discussed above, a relation change with a village allows you to recruit from them again.
If you have high relations with a village, there is a chance of you getting higher tier troops from recruitment with them. If you are really lucky, you could even end up recruiting elite troops, like huscarls from a Nord village, without having to train them. I have heard of two stories of getting 50+ Huscarls from a village, and one story of someone getting dozens of Swadian knights from a village.

Brief Overview of Warband's Meta

There are two mainstream metas for character and companion combos:
For combat characters supported by INT companions, you generally want to build your character as a heavily armored horse archer with a melee weapon as a side weapon. So you could go Bow+Arrows+Arrows+2H sword, or Bow+Arrows+Sword+Shield. Horse archer builds excel in prolonged battles, and theoretically, as a player, you could solo an entire army by yourself if you had enough arrows with you. I do not recommend getting 10 horse archery, most pros I've seen suggest 4-6 as the ideal amount of horse archery.
For commander characters supported mostly by combat companions, you want to prioritize three skills, the 'Trinity' of skills: Surgery, Pathfinding, and Trainer.
For commander INT characters I would still put a few points into trainer on each of your companions. And your couple of INT companions should have 10 trainer for sure.
If you go INT, you'll want to be using a crossbow. You should also give your INT companions crossbows.
CHA is probably the worst stat for the player character to focus on. A CHA build is useful for newer players, since 10 Leadership allows your armies to be larger and require less weekly upkeep. But an experienced player will have no issues with party size or money. I would consider a CHA build a 'training wheels' build.
All skills in Warband are useful to some extent, but not all are equally useful for the Player. The 'non-meta' skills are Power Throw, Tracking, Persuasion, First Aid, and Trade.
For Tracking, just have a companion with a few points in it.
For Persuasion, it helps you marry earlier, helps you hire mercenaries cheaper, and helps you convince lords to defect to your kingdom. It also allows you to convince routed enemies to become your prisoners. The only one that really matters from a meta perspective is the defection.

Perisno Troop Skill Difficulty Leveling

For Trade, it really helps to have a trading companion but the player should absolutely never invest into Trade unless you plan on RP'ing.
For armies, the meta is pretty simple.
In the field, Swadian Knights > everything. Heavy cavalry dominates the meta, both in Native and nearly every single mod I have played. If you do not like the heavy cavalry meta, I would suggest the Viking Conquest DLC.
As far as sieges go, it's all about those Huscarls and Rhodok Crossbowmen. Swadian knights will work about as well as huscarls, but they are far more expensive.
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Creating your character:

0.8 allows you to have (currently) three different starts for your characters, and removed the “Inheritance” option in character creation. Like basically all other Warband mods, you create your own character through several different options offered to you, IF you pick the standard start for your character.

The other two starts are slightly different; there is one where you become a raider and have to avenge your fallen comrades to regain your honor, and another one where you shipwrecked as a merchant, and must rebuild your finances and career. These starts, while providing you with unique additions (Unique companion for raider, and significantly better starting gear for Merchant), doesn’t affect the gameplay, and can be chosen at the player’s desire.

Starting out the game:

Perisno is a difficult mod to start out with. There are a huge variations of different enemies and hostile minor factions who will absolutely demolish any new players. Unlike in Native, where you can ‘solo carry’ your band of peasants against the bandits and sea raiders that roam the land with a lance, in Perisno, you will often find enemies which take no damage from even your couched lance, with your comparatively laughable proficiencies and skills.

There are enemies such as Demon Worshippers, Assassins of Ral’Daiun, Third Legionnaires, Ankars, Divine Aethlings, Holy Crusaders and other similarly extremely powerful units which are at the moment hostile to this new, foreign being in Perisno. Your paltry recruits, and the mercenaries which you would be able to afford are simply no match for these elites, and trying to even overcome them at the beginning of the game is simply suicide.

Fortunately, Perisno is equally inhabited by looters and bandits which the player can kill for experience and money. But be warned; there are wolves among these sheeps. If you see a small looter party, but with Vanquishers and Knight of Dooms, you should either prepare to sustain immense casualties or just run away.

As a new character to this foreign land, doing passive quests for Guildmasters of various towns throughout the land is the best way to start accumulating funds and experience. Delivering ales and cattle escorts (which follows you :D) provides you with usually 500 - 1500 aurums, which is more than enough to sustain your ragtag band of men and women for months.

Apart from doing quests, there are many other lucrative and easy way for you to level up your troops and earn more aurums:

1. Hunting the various herds of animals, and selling their meat and hides are extremely profitable. Around 20 - 30 slaughtered animals can net you 2000 - 4000 aurums if you sell all the resulting gains.
2. Helping various Lords and Patrols fighting against elite hostile units, and winning, will improve your relationships with their respective factions and ability to loot better armour for yourself and companions.
3. Trading is highly profitable: Due to the large expanses of Perisno, buying common goods in a town and selling them as exotic rarities in another on the opposite side of the map will provide you with large amount of cash relatively safely.

During your travels in building your coffers, you should focus on levelling your character as well. Engage in fights you are sure to win, focus your attacks on the higher tier troops, participating in tournaments are great way to build your character from a commoner to a respectable fighter.

Expanding your economy:

Eventually, you will have around 10000 aurums in your coffers. While it might be tempting to waste your wealth on that shiny new chestpiece that just appeared in the shop, or blow it all away on that beautiful sword, establishing a secure economy goes a huge way in making your future endeavours much easier.

Ignore enterprises. As a new mechanic in 0.8, landowning, an immensely popular addition for many players, is introduced in Perisno. Investing your money into acres of land, while seemingly expensive; over 2000 to 3000 aurums per acre, will provide you with a stable source of income which can be slowly increased.

Choose a wealthy town and buy land. As the land is accumulating aurums, explore the map and earn more money through combat or accomplishing quests. After a week or two, return to receive the money you earn from landowning, and invest into more land. After a 4 to 5 months, you will finally own all fifty acres of land available, and while you would have spent around 150000 to 200000 aurums in purchasing all the land, the land will reward you with around 10000 aurum every week; your investment will be completely paid off within four to five months, and the land will constantly generate money for you until the end of days.

Companions:

There are different companions which you can hire throughout Perisno. At the beginning, you would not be able to afford the exorbitant fees for Arcanus or Tamaris; two extremely powerful individuals which are deadly fighters and leaders of men. However, you would be able to get Shi-Jin and Zara for free. Shi Jin is a powerful companion, with great gear and proficiencies, and have high trainer skill which can whip your peasants into proper soldiers. Zara, on the other hand, is similarly low level to your starting character, and can be morphed into anything you desire.

Companions such as Alindel and Zengesh are cheap and offers invaluable skills for the players. Alindel, being a surgeon, will keep your troops from getting killed, and Zengesh provides tracking and spotting skills which allows your army to traverse faster than most other warbands in the game.

Creating a strong army:

You will quickly notice your peasant troops are literally ants for the high tier troops which you will inevitably encounter throughout Perisno. Farming Snowcrawlers and peasant rebels are great source of experience, and once your troops are upgraded to second or third tier, you can start taking on Volheere raiders and deserters.

Having a high trainer skills is definitely paramount to your success.Getting several companions with good trainer skills (Shi Jin for example) will quickly allow you to whip you fresh recruits into somewhat workable units in fights. They aren’t going to be great, but at least you can replace them without too much difficulties.

The important thing to note, however, is realising that your unit troops are not going to be effective against elite units unless you have a large amount of them (20 minimum). An individual Maccavian Northguard or Tolranian Kingsmen can cut through trash mobs pretty quickly, but a single lance, or a random arrow, would be enough to remove them from the battlefield. Before taking on any higher tier enemies, be sure to amass a large number of good units.

To ensure you win most of your engagements, acquire mercenaries. There inevitably would be several elite units in the occasional looter party, either spawned with them or rescued from prisoners, and unless you can solo defeat them, they will scythe through your units. You can hire faction-specific mercenaries from specific taverns in each faction, and even though they are not the best, you can get them relatively cheaply and they are still much more effective than your troops. These faction-specific mercenaries reflects how their faction fights in general; the Maccavian mercenaries have heavy armour and focuses on survivability and the Elintorians mercenaries focuses on archery (they literally have Chinese-made copies of the Elintorian Crimson Ranger armour).

You can hire general mercenaries from taverns as well. Mercenary Stalkers, Bounty Hunters and the fearsome Maiden of Wars could be found throughout various taverns in Perisno, and they provide an exotic and different fighting style to the traditional mercenaries that you can hire from taverns. They are more expensive, but they are much more effective fighters compared the faction specific mercenaries when they are high tier.

Mid-game developments:

Once you have a decent army, it’s time for you to affiliate yourself with a faction. Becoming a vassal is key in being allowed to hold fiefs, and it allows you to recruit Noble units from the castles and towns.

At this point, you should have max land in at least two to three different towns. This is vital as a stable cash flow is required for you to sustain your army and your garrisons.

Improving relationships with lords are a prerequisite for you to receive any kind of fiefs from your liege beyond the starting village he/she provides for you. Accompany your Marshalls and participate in sieges and battles, assist your fellow lords in need, do quests and all manners of things which would increase your relationship with them. Being an honourable person helps tremendously in this regard, as upstanding and good-natured lords will automatically have their relationship increased with you if you gain honour ratings, even if they never met you before.

Your starting village is of little use to you; it’s going to get constantly raided and give you barely any revenue through taxes. You will going to want a castle or a town where you can rest in and store troops which you don’t need with you at all times. Unlike Native, Perisno fiefs are much more realistically garrisoned. Castles almost always have 400 - 1000 troops in them, and towns have 1000+. You wouldn’t be able to solo siege like in Native, and full marshall forces of over 2000 troops are always required to take one of these walled fortresses. Therefore, look for one’s with small amount of garrisons; perhaps ones which was just taken by the enemy. These fiefs would usually be garrisoned lightly and you should be able to take them alone. Unfortunately for you, once you manage to take a castle (rarely towns), you are going to have to defend it against hordes of hungry lords for your land. Large marshall forces would be raised to take the fief away from you, and unless you somehow manages to defend solo against over 1000+ troops, you would most likely lose the fief.

Therefore, I highly encourage you in participating in your own marshall forces and take fiefs along with your fellow lords. Increase your relations with them and they would reward your support by supporting you for the acquisition of a new fief. With a around 30+ relationship with your fellow lords in your faction, it’s extremely common for you to become marshall and be able to lead massive campaigns to take enemy fortresses. It also hugely increases your chance of receiving the fief that you just captured. This should be the period where you lead your faction in capturing towns and requesting for yourself. Having a decent amount of properties is important later on in creating your own faction.

The Zann Invasion

Depending on your rate of progress; some people like to take it slow and build up their forces and finances slowly but stably, while some tries to become vassal as fast as possible. For those who are not a vassal or mercenary of any faction yet, the Zann simply makes the map changes colour, and doesn’t really affect the player in any way.

However, if you are affiliated with a faction, then the Zann would definitely be affecting you. When the Zann invades Perisno, there are scripted events which causes massive amount of Zann troops to suddenly appear and besieging towns and castles. Unless you already managed to gather an army filled with elites, you are going to have a hard time trying to stop towns being conquered.

This is commonly known as ‘The Black Week’. You will be powerless to stop such a powerful invasion at first, and preventing a town or two falling into the hands of the Zann is usually a great feat. Unfortunately for the player and their faction, the Zann at the height of its invasion will easily have over 10000 troops at any one time on the field, with massive spearheads units and reinforcements roaming uncontested in Perisno due to their massive sizes and large amount of elite units. Regardless of how valiantly the players resist this invasion, towns and castles WILL fall into the hand of the Zann, and in a mere week, you would suddenly find a large portion of the map is in the hands of the Zann; usually even the biggest faction of all.

The War against the Zann

The major factions of Perisno would be utterly unprepared for such a massive and domineering force to land in Perisno. During ‘The Black Week’, factions wouldn’t be able to muster up a sizable marshal force in time to aid the defences of their fiefs, and the number accuminated would be too small to be effective against tens of thousands of troops the Zann fields in the initial landings.

However, once the Zann finished their conquest; their scripted events are finally over, they will find themselves to be in a severe disadvantage despite holding a large amount of fiefs in Perisno. The massive parties you find roaming across Perisno can longer be found; they are used in garrisoning the fiefs the Zann managed to capture. Suddenly, the Zann with their seven lords and their spearhead escorts will find themselves outnumbered against the hundreds of lords in Perisno which they declared war upon, and in weeks or months the first massive campaigns of the various major factions would be initiated to take back their lands.

The War against the Zann is a prime time for the players to strive to become the marshal and take back towns which belonged to your faction. This allows players to gain ownership of towns inside of your faction’s territories usually unavailable to the player unless he joins another factions and invades. Example: Being granted Arendal as a fief while being a vassal for Maccavia.

Unfortunately for some, the Zann invasion almost guarantee a destruction of a major faction in Perisno; their initial assault mainly focuses on Tolranian, Maccavian, Elintorian and Reich lands, and either of these factions would fall under the immense onslaught of the Zann, and their lands would be part of the new Zann Dynasty. To ensure that your faction does not get demolished, constant vigilance is required; destroy any Zann parties you see, although they might have over 400 troops it is necessary for the Zann to be unable to marshall any more forces after the initial invasion.

If you carry hard enough, and lead enough marshal forces to success, the Zann invasion can prove to be an invaluable opportunity to expand one’s territories and make your faction the strongest in the coming days.

End Game: The Conquest of Perisno

Eventually, you would have reached the point where are ready to rebel against your liege and starting your own kingdom. You should have land in at least 5 different towns, each with the full 50 acres, a town and various castles of your own, and your fiefs being relatively close to each other so you can defend them much easier. (The Falcons makes for the perfect place to start your own faction, but you have to conquer Fountain Hall.)

You have to be prepared to make your companions lords as well, in order to be able to field enough troops to start expanding your kingdom. Tamaris, Arcanus, Shi Jin, Silitheviel are great candidates, as they like each other and does not cause conflict within your realm due to their decent personalities. Prior to making them a lord of a fief, however you should invest heavily into their leadership skill so they can field large amount of troops, which would be vital.

You will also need at least 30 RtR at the start, at well as 2000+ renown and preferably high honour rating, as that would mean you would be able to recruit honourable lords easier and ensure their loyalty to you even through hard times.

When you finally take the plunge and rebel, you would be immediate thrown into war against your former faction. Therefore, it’s much more favorable to you if you rebel when your faction is at war with other factions, which would draw off the heat and ensure that massive marshal forces would not be levied against your fiefs. A good relation with your former liege is also important, as that would allow you to make peace with him relatively quickly, and possibly even obtain a letter of recognition which would make your Right to Rule increase significantly as well.

First Steps - Consolidation

The first thing to do when becoming a king is to get your court in order; hire all the staff available and make one of your companion minister, as that would offer you all the options available compared to a prominent noblemen from the area.

You should then grant some of your villages and castles to your companions, which will make them lords and capable of participating in your marshal forces in either offence or defence.

Your faction is likely to be the weakest and smallest faction in Perisno, and your vassals would require time to get their armies together. Immediately make peace with any faction you are at war with, and obtain letter of recognition from other the monarch to boost your RtR.

Second Step - Expansion

Once your vassals have build up an army, it’s time for aggressive expansion. Look for weakened factions, whose embroiled in war with several fronts. Siege and capture their weakened fiefs, defeat their lords (let them go, however, if they are honourable), and if possible, defeat their faction entirely. Once a faction is defeated, their associated lords would flock to the other factions for vassalage, and many will flee to your court. This will allow you to build up a larger campaign force, and have more lords patrolling around your faction’s territories.

As monarch, there are options available to you to make your realm a much safer place. Hiring expensive, yet large parties of mercenaries will deter most lords from snooping around your lands, and a Perisnoan army is a fearsome army of 800+ men which will destroy even campaigns.

Third Step - Ending the game

Perisno Troop Skill Difficulty List

At this point, money and troops are no longer an issue, and diplomacy becomes useless as your faction trumps all others. Slowly taking over other fiefs, persuading more lords to join your cause, and conquering every town and castle in your way is merely a chore, and no longer poses much of a challenge with your overwhelming forces at your disposal.